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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28358235">to all the ones that bite</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RitualSalt/pseuds/RitualSalt'>RitualSalt</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the god of broken things [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wonder Woman (Movies - Jenkins), Wonder Woman - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aftermath of Torture, Alpha Diana (Wonder Woman), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cultural Differences, Dom/sub Undertones, Don't Like Don't Read, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mythical Beings &amp; Creatures, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Steve Trevor, Original Mythology, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve Trevor Lives, Worldbuilding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:48:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>26,109</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28358235</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RitualSalt/pseuds/RitualSalt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When abused army omega Steve Trevor meets Diana, Amazon Princess of Themyscira and alpha of alphas, he knows how this story goes; he’ll escort her to a war zone, get roughed up a bit, find himself an Allied outpost to be reprimanded at and never see her again.</p><p>That’s not what happens.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Diana (Wonder Woman)/Steve Trevor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the god of broken things [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2076801</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>56</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><strong>NOTE:</strong> please read the tags and notes. This prologue is very tame compared to the actual story and it may be disturbing for some readers. I have done my due-diligence and I expect you to have done yours.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><strong>Chapter Warnings:</strong> non-linear and unreliable narrator, weird god things, off-screen background character death.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">He was nowhere and everywhere and yet - he was somewhere. That somewhere, was a somewhere away from his offspring and the screaming-dying-weeping noises of his kin, last of those that there were. It was nowhere, but it wasn't because he wasn't where there was dying and it was everywhere because he had left but he hadn't; he felt every inch of it happening as if it was happening upon his back, as if someone was rearranging the very molecules he'd gathered around himself into a battle scene played out with flesh, blood, dirt and metal.</p><p class="p1">He was nowhere and everywhere but most importantly - somewhere. This somewhere was located in the thin membrane between one plane and the next; the metaphorical crevice between shifting tectonic plates, the gap between skin and cloth, were he to take a form that needed either of those things. If this were all happening to things that needed eyes or liked to have them, he might have even gone so far as to say this was happening in a mountain, and that he had dragged himself away to a passage that should have led outside but didn't for some reason he didn't know. The opening should have been here, but it wasn't. The door had been closed. The door had been <em>locked</em>. He couldn't get through. He couldn't get away.</p><p class="p1">Far behind him - if distance was really a thing - someone screamed. That voice called a name he had favoured long, long ago and he would have wept, if he had possessed eyes and a face and fluids to expel and also desired to do so. He wasn't strong enough for any of those things however - and he wasn't strong enough to pry open the door or go back to help and so all he could do was crawl closer to the door and lay there, pressed against it.</p><p class="p1">There was so little left in him now. There was so little left in any of them. This world they depended upon to survive now was so strange - the magic ebbed and flowed, came and went and with it, their power too. They - <em>he</em> - needed it to survive and there was so little at the moment. Eaten by the beasts that ruled these lands, eaten by the <em>plants</em>, by the <em>air</em>, by the things with forms and without that crawled in the planes above and below and to the sides of that little ball of dirt covered with <em>humans</em>.</p><p class="p1">Humans. How he hated them and loved them and adored them and loathed them, all in equal measures. How they said his many names. How they burnt his temples down. How they carved the faces he liked to wear into things that lasted longer than the passing of magic. How they forgot all about him every time he went away, away, <em>away</em>. It wasn't his fault he needed the magic so badly. It wasn't his fault they could survive in that dark world without it and he couldn't. What more did they want from him? He'd given them blessings, shown them miracles, introduced them to <em>wonder,</em> to <em>legends</em> and this was how they repaid him? How they repaid all his kin? Throwing away their own <em>Gods</em> because they weren't there all the time?</p><p class="p1">So a few of them had been cursed or killed or sacrificed. Why did they care? There was so many of them and they lived such <em>short lives</em>. Barely any better than beasts, for all that they thought differently. How was he suppose to care, when they were there-and-gone in the space of waves crashing on shores, in the quick snap of growing plants? It felt like he could lift his head to look at clear skies turning to storms and by the time he looked back, all the ones he'd liked had withered to dust. Who could blame him for that? If they wanted to be remembered, they should have lived longer. Shone brighter. Been better. That wasn't his fault. He hadn't <em>made them</em>. It wasn't <em>his design</em>. He was just living his life and they happened to see him passing by. Who could blame him?</p><p class="p1">Somewhere that wasn't there or here, another scream called out. He heard the dying sounds, of someone passing beyond to rejoin the energies of the world. Whoever it was - and he thought it might have been an offspring, a lover, maybe a sibling, the sounds so familiar - but whoever it was, they would eventually re-emerge back into life and so he wasn't worried, exactly, except for the part of him that was and the rest of him, that was just <em>angry</em>.</p><p class="p1">Oh, how he was so angry. His own kin! His own <em>offspring!</em> That damned little creature had crawled back from the black and was <em>killing kin!</em> Chasing a parent into a hole like they were <em>worms!</em></p><p class="p1">He wasn't a worm. He knew he wasn't. He wasn't human or beast or even any of those creations of him and his kin that they'd made so long ago. Some of those creatures seemed to be the only ones that prayed anymore and he liked them for it - and more aside; they were all so beautiful and just powerful enough to be <em>better</em> than humans had ever been. Some of his best work. And look at them now - alive while their creators died. He didn't deserve that.</p><p class="p1">If he had had a head and if the edge of the plane had been a mountain wall, he would have leaned his face against the stone, the boundaries between this space they'd made for themselves and the plane above. They were very close to the main one - the better to soak up what magic there was. He thought the door he had gone for must have led up close to where his favourite creations were - he could hear one of them now, talking to him with no clue of the death and destruction happening only a step and a whole dimension over.</p><p class="p1"><em>Zeus, king of the Gods</em>, cried that tiny voice, a pinprick in the dark, <em>I have been your loyal servant for many years. I have led your armies and killed your enemies. I now hold the last of the Amazons at the last of your temples. I have refused many rewards before, but I ask you now... please... just this one thing...</em></p><p class="p1">But of course. They always wanted something. Everyone always wanted something. Mates wanted fucking and offsprings wanted caring and siblings wanted power and parents wanted to <em>eat</em> and here his creations were, begging for scraps.</p><p class="p1"><em>Just this one thing, </em>wept the tiny voice. She was so old compared to humans and yet so young compared to him. A child among elders. An embryo compared to real living. <em>Just this one thing, my king, please. I want nothing else but this one thing</em>...</p><p class="p1">There was something with her. A turn. A <em>branch</em>. Not of a tree, but of the <em>world</em>. He could feel it - a split of power, a thread of fate. Oh, how he wished he was close enough to lean down and pull the weave apart to have a closer look at <em>those</em> stitches - he loved a good destiny. If only he had the time...</p><p class="p1">Another scream. It drowned out the little voice, begging for scraps. If he'd had teeth, he would have ground them in annoyance. He was trying to <em>listen</em>.</p><p class="p1">Closer to nowhere and everywhere, another of his kin died and that wretched offspring laughed and ate what remained of what fled. He could feel it from here and it filled him with rage. He was going to die at the hands of a brat that would eat the scraps of him like his own parent had eaten <em>him</em>, a long time ago.</p><p class="p1"><em>Please, please, please,</em> begged the tiny voice. He sensed blood, spilled upon an alter that must belong to him. Spilled on something else too - that thread of destiny. A little gateway opened to him, all the better to listen in on but too small to escape through. <em>Please, please, Zeus, give me a child</em>.</p><p class="p1">She'd carved herself an offspring - like him and his kin did, to make more of the little soldiers. All the right parts were there; raw materials and sacrifices, metal and bone and <em>dirt</em> and blood now too, hers. He could make an Amazon from that, if he wanted to.</p><p class="p1">His offspring was close enough now that he could sense the smears of the dead - he didn't have much time left. Everything was almost over. Who knew when he would wake up - a hundred turns of that little ball of dirt? Two hundred? Five hundred? A thousand? Would they remember him at all, him, the greatest king of all Gods? Would the humans speak <em>any</em> of his names? Or would they only recall the survivor - his wretched offspring, killer of kin and most likely ruler after all was said and done?</p><p class="p1">Oh, he didn't want that. He didn't want that <em>at</em> <em>all</em>. No one was going to steal <em>his</em> crown. The brat might kill him now, but if he could die, so could the offspring. All he needed was a killer.</p><p class="p1">And what luck. Someone had already done most of the work for him.</p><p class="p1"><em>Alright, Hippolyta</em>, he thought, <em>you'll get your child. And I'll get my revenge</em>.</p><p class="p1">It was the last thought he had, before he pushed what remained of his power through the little crack made by a prayer, into that tiny vessel moulded from clay and his offspring finally found him.</p><p class="p1">There was truly nothing after that.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>So you know how in every fandom there seems to be <em>that one fic?</em> Maybe it's a series, maybe it's a standalone, but either way - it's super long, pretty dark, perpetually unfinished and stuffed so full of worldbuilding that it's nearly becoming its own thing?</p><p>Well, I'm not saying this fic is that, but I'm not saying it's <em>not</em> either. Either way, welcome to <em>the god of broken things</em>. This is a garbage AU of a much better AU I haven't written yet and it features a lot of things - creature!Diana, british!Steve Trevor, ABO fuckery, a subpar level of research / Wonder Woman knowledge and no beta, because we die like the old gods. I started this in May 2020 and now I have 6 digits worth of words and none of my chapters are under 10k. (: please don't ask how close to done I am, I don't want to think about it.</p><p><strong>STORY WARNINGS:</strong> This particular story, out of all the stories in this series/AU, deals heavily with rape in an pre-modern, ABO world. There’s no real way to skip over it. Most of it will be implied/briefly referenced or a quick part of flashbacks/internal monologue, but there are a few, mostly short and vague, on-screen assaults that'll be described throughout the story. <strong>None of these assaults are between Diana and Steve, however,</strong> and there will be no "misunderstandings" either. They aren't going to hurt each other in this.</p><p>Lastly, obviously this story takes place during World War I and is set in an Alpha/Beta/Omega universe; it's not pretty and you should expect it to contain elements typical of media involving these subjects.</p><p>The first chapter will go up tomorrow as a 'fuck 2020' treat, but chapter 2 will start on the monthly schedule and so will go up on February 1st. Chapter 1 will cover most of what the warnings state, so if you aren't sure if you're gonna want to read it, that chapter will be enough to let you decide on the rest.</p><p>I haven't watched WW84 yet as of posting this. We'll see what I have to retcon later.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. PART I</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>PART I</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <em>foreigner's god by hozier</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. she moves with shameless wonder</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><strong>CHAPTER WARNINGS:</strong> 'present'ism/sexist behaviour, referenced and implied sexual abuse/assault, captivity/being held prisoner, torture and medical experimentation, deaths of unnamed background characters, brief acceptance of death/brief vaguely suicidal thoughts, near-drowning/near-death experience, interrogation, magical compulsion, brief food insecurities/issues.</p><p><strong>NOTE:</strong> as mentioned in the prologue's notes, this chapter touches on a lot of the worst parts of the whole story/series. If you can handle this, the rest of the story should be fine  - it's <em>mostly</em> uphill from here. Mostly. ....... Mostly-ish.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Steven Trevor had never really considered himself a religious man. He kept no bible, held no nightly rituals to God and took the chances he got to avoid church masses, rare that they were. But on the warm February afternoon that he finally received orders to see his superior officer in the battered command tent looming over the British encampment, Steve prayed.</p><p class="p1">It was hot in Syria. Even in the winter. The sand-swept town they had taken residence in must have been beautiful at some point, but war and desperation had worn it to the quick and now it sat like a limp, dying animal, clinging to the side of the railway line that ran deep into the desert. They'd been shuttling spies and supplies back and forth to the revolts for months now and Steve had spent all that time doing his best to remain unnoticed to the notoriously bitter and authoritative alpha in charge of giving orders here. He'd been behaving. He'd been doing his job. He hadn't kicked up a fuss. He had been as close to a good omega as he could be and hadn't done a single bloody thing that might require a stern alpha's discipline since he'd gotten here.</p><p class="p1">So Steve prayed. <em>Dear God</em>, he begged, <em>please, not this</em>. He rarely got further than that. It wasn't right to ask God for things he didn't deserve, but he asked all the same, no matter how many times he'd repeated those words to no avail.</p><p class="p1">The Colonel holding court in the weather-beaten tent must have been in his forties - a career officer who had lucked out getting a non-combat position for most of the war. He'd been there long enough that his desk was real wood and the chair had leather on it. He couldn't have been more textbook alpha; his facial hair was cut to exactly regulation. All his insignia and metals were pinned to his fully done-up uniform, despite the other officers around him being half-out of theirs. When he looked at Steve, it was with a cold look of distain. The few times Steve had been in the same room as the Colonel - in the mess or what passed for an officer's lounge around here - he'd heard more than a few comments from him on the alpha's feelings of omegas in the Army. <em>Should have been left at home</em>, he had sneered, the night his second in command had bent Steve over the checkers table to knot him. <em>War is best left to real men</em>. Another of the officers had laughed at that - they all knew omegas weren't real men. Real enough to enlist, maybe, but not man enough to count where it mattered.</p><p class="p1">Sweating under the gaze of the Colonel, Steve thought he would have preferred a repeat of that night. At least then, he'd been mostly ignored. Only a real woman would do for a man like Colonel Robert Tennent and Steve wasn't that either.</p><p class="p1">Maybe it wasn't something Steve had done that had landed him here. Maybe someone had just issued a complaint. <em>The omega’s fighting again. He won’t listen to his betters. He screamed all night and someone should tell him to know better</em>. Maybe Steve was lucky and all this was going to be was a stern talking to about not acting like the whore the army treated him like.</p><p class="p1">He wasn't that lucky.</p><p class="p1">"Private Trevor," the Colonel said, dragging Steve's rank and name out of his mouth as if he'd only just learned it off a file and didn't like it - which may have been true. "I am told you have intelligence training."</p><p class="p1">"That's true, sir," Steve said. He kept his back as straight as he could get it, hands folded over his belly instead of behind his back, like omegas should do. Technically, intelligence training was the reason he was here at all. His orders from the last handler he'd been assigned had been simple; translate for the Arabs, spy on the Ottomans, decode reports - or in other words, do whatever it was that spies needed to do but none of the others wanted to do, because it was too dangerous or not dangerous enough or they just didn't want to do it. Steve couldn't say no, of course, so he did it anyway. It was the only type of work he ever seemed to get.</p><p class="p1">“We have received reports that Isabel Maru had been spotted,” Colonel Tennent continued, briefly surveying a report that he didn't bother to show Steve. "Up along the coast, near Smyrna. Apparently she has a base somewhere along the water and she's supplying the Ottomans with gas."</p><p class="p1">Steve wasn't surprised. Everyone knew that Doctor Maru had been supplying the Ottomans with chemical weapons. She'd also been supplying the Germans and the Bulgarians, the Austrians and Hungarians and a dozen others - even, on notable occasion, the French, the Spanish and a few other Allies as well. Everyone who had been fighting in the war for longer than six months had run into something Maru had made - including the people buying her work in the first place, which meant few of them bought from her a second time. The only interesting fact in that information really, Steve thought, was that someone was funding her again, considering the rate at which she poisoned her own buyers.</p><p class="p1">The alpha's gaze flickered up to Steve for the first time. There was something in his eyes Steve didn't like. He looked at Steve for long enough that Steve was forced to look away, or risk a disciplinary charge - or a beating, possibly, from one of the eager looking alphas Colonel Tennent had surrounded himself with. A good omega always looked away and Steve did try.</p><p class="p1">"We have been commanded to send a reconnaissance agent," Colonel Tennent said eventually, drawing the words out slowly and with the mildest edge of hidden glee to them. "To investigate the laboratory, if it exists, and collect any of her research that can be gained. That is... up your alley, isn't it?" The second look he gave Steve made it clear he thought very little of Steve's alley. "You leave tomorrow."</p><p class="p1">Years of learning to bite his tongue had done Steve enough good that he was able to nod and accept the suicide mission for what it was. He spent the rest of the day in a fearful daze, absentmindedly working on a cipher he didn't much care for. By the evening his orders had been updated; he had been given an escort - because spy or not, it wouldn’t do to send an omega out <em>alone</em> - and someone, somewhere, thinking they'd have themselves a laugh, had made them both up parts as captured British soldiers, going somewhere, somehow. Steve reported to the quartermaster, received his fake papers to sell the part and had put up the token arguments that he could play the role better if he didn’t have a damn metal collar around his neck with <em>property of the British Army</em> bloody stamped into it. His escort - a young alpha who'd cornered Steve behind the mess not two days ago and made Steve get on his knees with far too much glee - had joked the Ottomans wouldn’t know he was the bait if they took it off and the officers around him had laughed and that was that, really.</p><p class="p1">In the morning, they left by that fated railroad. Steve hadn't slept. He rarely did before missions - there was something about walking towards his own doom that always kept him up. That was the only thought in his head as the day was dragged away from him; that, and the fact that he hadn't been given any more information other than what little Tennent had told him in the command tent. It was unusual even for the army. There wasn't any point trying to fight it, however, so Steve spent that first day trying to sleep and failing at it instead.</p><p class="p1">Somewhere during it, Steve’s escort came over, a saunter in his step and a grin on his face, to sling an arm around Steve's collared neck and hiss <em>heard you like it rough, bitch</em> into his ear.</p><p class="p1">That set the tone of the rest of the journey. They spent two days on the train before they were dumped in enemy territory and Steve spent all of them wondering if he could convince his escort to run off at a supply stop and otherwise trying to put his escort's <em>rough</em> actions out of his mind. When they were finally left somewhere in the desert, and told to spend some time wandering around until they got caught and delivered to the appropriate enemy troops, Steve wasn’t even sorry when they were eventually found and one of their capturers immediately broke the damn bastard’s hand for back-talking. Most omegas learned that lesson the same way - Steve sure had - and so he didn't feel particularly bad about it. The rat bastard had put two new marks into his skin anyway and near tore Steve's knee out of its socket doing his best to enjoy their uninterrupted time together.</p><p class="p1">The Turks weren't any better, of course, on their brief but winding journey to the laboratory of Isabel Maru. They were bored, trigger-happy soldiers diverted from the real fighting and took it out on their prisoners - exactly what Steve expected them to do and exactly, it seemed, what his escort had not. Along the way, they picked up more victims - genuinely captured soldiers, occasionally civilians or prisoners otherwise - and topped it all off with supplies that came in crates they didn't open.</p><p class="p1">Once or twice, perhaps more, on nights that turned far colder than he wished them too, Steve ended up near those boxes. Sometimes it was out of a sense of duty that barely remained and other times - most times - it was because that was just where the soldiers had left him, after they wandered off sated and tired. On those nights, Steve could smell the stench the crates gave off - oily fumes and foul smells, rotten odours that felt like they burned the inside of his nose and brought up more than a few unpleasant memories of trenches and torn-up battlefields.</p><p class="p1">He had a very good idea he knew what Maru was going to use them for.</p><p class="p1">Sometime in late February, or maybe early March, after a few weeks of back and forth travel and torment at the tender mercies of bored enemy troops, Steve and his now-quiet escort were finally thrown at the feet of Isabel Maru, in the laboratory near Smyrna that wasn't suppose to exist but did. Steve had heard plenty about the alpha woman and her work on chemical weaponry, but laying at her feet, still smelling of the Ottoman soldiers that had gotten bored, Steve thought the rumours had not captured her at all.</p><p class="p1">Maru was terrifying. Her every move telegraphed like she was about to bite at anyone standing too close, her every word hissed as if she could cut with those alone - even her scent was nauseating; a bitter twist of aroused alpha and something that reminded Steve of those few times he had been gassed. There was a look in her eyes that went beyond any power-hungry alpha Steve had ever seen - it was barely even a look at all, really. It was more the absence of one; an absence of humanity so profound that even the shadow of it couldn't be seen in her scarred and warped face.</p><p class="p1">The guards called her <em>doktor zehiri. </em>The prisoners still alive and lucid in the cells they were thrown into called her the same in English.</p><p class="p1">Doctor Poison.</p><p class="p1">It took Steve not even three days to learn the truth of that one. What Maru did not poison herself, her shadow did. The laboratory was a sprawling beast that ruined everything it touched - even the guards looked as if they were on the verge of death, and yet still they unleashed torments upon the few others that remained. Defiant enemy alphas they beat the spirit out of, wisely silent betas that were tortured for information and the omegas - few that there were - well.</p><p class="p1">Mostly, they were dragged into the hallway between the cells and used. The few that weren't soldiers broke then - clearly, Steve thought, they'd had decent alphas up until then and hadn't ever experienced what happened to unbonded and unclaimed omegas when the rest of the world wasn't watching. The others - soldiers of a half dozen armies - had suffered these fates before - as Steve had too. They were used to it.</p><p class="p1">He was so used to it.</p><p class="p1">It was Maru that nearly broke him, however. She moved through the troops with no pattern he could see. Some of them were put in chambers and gassed, others fed mixtures that killed them from the inside out. She favoured needles as much as she favoured a scalpel and whenever Steve's number came up, he didn't know what to expect; was it time to be cut up? Was it time to be dosed? Would she just get bored a few minutes in and move on to someone else?</p><p class="p1">Steve's collection of scars grew. The floor-roughed wounds on his back and knees stopped closing. He developed a cough that didn't seem to go away. When he got the chance to sleep, his dreams were as painful as his waking hours and just as prone to twisting oddly in unexpected changes.</p><p class="p1">It took- Steve wasn't sure how long it took. But it was sooner, rather than later, the day his escort seized on the floor of his cell and didn't stop until his heart did. The bile that came up from his throat was tinged a nearly organic orange, as if some part of him had been poisoned from the inside out. Maru had the guards drag the corpse into her laboratory, and when next Steve wound up on the table, he saw part of it still there; eerily unrotted and now in pieces.</p><p class="p1">He waited for the day he would follow suit - but it didn't come. Maybe it was because Maru mostly turned her nose up at him, going for the bigger, stronger, alpha prisoners that were more likely to last under her tools of torture. Maybe it was because Steve was more used to operating with so little in him - it wouldn't be the first time he'd suffered through torment on little sleep and less food. How many times had he broken a bone, got hit in the head, been rubbed raw against a stone floor and still expected to get up and go? How much of his life had he spent learning to suffer under an alpha? How much of that had he done after hours of fighting, after forced marches, after beatings, after the worst nights of his life?</p><p class="p1">Too much. That was how much. It had been too much and it still was.</p><p class="p1">In the end, Steve counted a month. Or there about. Maybe two. Maru went through prisoners like she was in rut, killing her supply faster than it could be replenished in most cases. The days she finally committed herself to fulfilling the mass orders that were sent to war were the days the guards filled the cells up again. On those days, Steve tried to put effort to memorizing faces, names, the ranks and the armies that filled the empty spots. Maru more often than not worked for the Central Powers, but that didn't limit her - there were a few disgraced Ottoman soldiers clearly sentenced to suffer out their final days here. A scattering of Bulgarians that went quickly. A German omega in the cell next to Steve, who didn't even last a week when the guards were too rough. The rest were a mix and he tried his best up until Maru gave him something that lost him days, burning his skin and his mind until his throat was raw from the screaming.</p><p class="p1"><em>Dear God</em>, he begged - aloud or in his head, he didn't know. <em>Please, don't let me die here</em>. God must have been listening for once, because he came out the other side to Maru's face, lit up in excitement at the prospect of a victim that had <em>survived</em>.</p><p class="p1">"Oh hello," she purred, Spanish-accented English grating on his numb ears. "Aren't you a strong one?" The empty look in her eyes had been replaced by a fire that threatened to burn and while Steve considered himself less of a coward than he could have been, he was smart enough to press himself up against the far wall of the cell he'd been left to die in - there was only so much he could take.</p><p class="p1">There was a finality in being dragged out of that prison. Perhaps it hadn't been God's mercy that saved him, he realized, a single guard pulling him by an arm that might have been broken some weeks ago. Perhaps this was a punishment, the devil making sure his last moments were suffering in life, before he endured an eternity of it below. All the sins he'd committed and had committed upon him. Did it count, if you hadn't wanted it but it happened anyway?</p><p class="p1"><em>Thirteen years</em>, was his last real thought as he was dragged across the threshold of Maru's laboratory. He'd been in the army thirteen years. He hadn't heard of an omega with a longer record. He'd had thirteen years taken from him - thirteen years of never advancing through the ranks, of being little more than an army whore that didn't even get paid for it. Thirteen years of being lashed to beds to satisfy ruts, of being a unit's entertainment on long missions, of being called into lounges for a night of abuse. Thirteen years of being pushed to the floor and passed around like he was a toy or a bottle of liquor to be shared between friends, of being beaten for fighting back, for screaming, for doing anything but taking it like the <em>good bitch</em> God had made him to be. He had thirteen years worth of permanent friction burns, of broken limbs, of disobedient marks scarred across his face and this, here, now - this had to be the end. There couldn't possibly be more than this.</p><p class="p1">But there was something worse than all that and Maru gave it to him in the days that followed. Every prick of the needle or inhalant of vapour was a torture that nearly broke him anew and it was habit, perhaps more than anything, that kept him alive as he waited for her to send him away or kill him. <em>God!</em> he screamed, and maybe it was with his throat or with his thoughts, but either way, nobody seemed to hear him. He was alone.</p><p class="p1">On the rare occasions he was awake and lucid, laid out and strapped down to a table, he watched the delighted, blissful expression on Maru’s face as he struggled and knew it for what it was - a love and lust for terror and pain. If there were scientific or even ordered reasons behind her work, clearly it did not matter in the face of her desire to see others suffer, that he knew now for certain. He'd seen the look before. This wasn't the first alpha to bear that expression that he had seen - but he was beginning to suspect, as hours and days slipped away and his life with them, that she would be the last.</p><p class="p1">His only mild satisfaction was in being right. He'd always known he would die at the hands of a sadistic alpha and the world was clearly intending to deliver. It was how most army omegas went and now-</p><p class="p1">- well, now it was his turn.</p><p class="p1">Or so it seemed.</p><p class="p1">He didn't know how long he'd been on that table when a chance arose. Maru had been bored and disinterested all day and finally she abandoned him halfway through a vicious session, wandering off to either <em>attend</em> to herself or to find another victim, and it was there, bleeding onto a wooden table that had taken so much of his blood already, that Steve realized one of the buckles was more broken than it looked from his thrashing.</p><p class="p1">It was a tiny opening. Little more than a tiny crack in stone, too small to really escape through. But Steve was worn and near broken and so tired and yet - <em>still</em> - a little bit angry, that she had dared to kill him lying down on his back, where nature dictated he should die. It was too tiny an opening, but it was one all the same.</p><p class="p1">He couldn't die on his back. If he had any final wish in this world, it was that one. Steve got one hand free and the other followed. A guard came in to take him back to the cells and Steve shoved an abandoned scalpel through his throat before the beta could call for backup.</p><p class="p1">His uniform didn't exactly fit Steve’s much smaller, omega frame, but the boots were close enough to not hinder and the man’s unwashed scent would hide him well enough to put some distance between him and this place, at the very least. It was only when Steve was struggling to get numb fingers to cooperate on the buttons that he even realized how far he had gotten.</p><p class="p1">There wasn't a plan. He was in pain, barely lucid and so, so <em>tired</em> and so <em>sick</em> of everything that happened and the truth of it all; that even if he managed to escape today and find his way back to the nearest British outpost, he'd have no real intelligence or reports on how to sabotage Maru and it would have been a worthless mission in the end for a worthless omega, a waste of a dead escort and he would be punished for that all too-</p><p class="p1">He slid out the door into an empty workshop and saw Maru's notebook sitting on her desk.</p><p class="p1">It was just- bloody, fucking, just <em>sitting</em> there. For a long, long moment, Steve stared at it, wondering if maybe, <em>maybe</em> God did have mercy after all, before he snatched it up with trembling fingers and <em>ran</em>.</p><p class="p1">He made it all the way to the base’s tiny airfield before someone noticed him. He had just enough time to scramble into the cockpit of one of the patrol planes before anyone raised the alarm and still, the engine was roaring before they could make a move. Shouts and gunshots rang out around him and the glass cracked in front of his face as he finally felt the plane lurch in movement, but he coasted down a runway all the same, freedom singing his blood even as the breath was torn from his lungs as he went along, along, along and finally - up, up, <em>up</em>.</p><p class="p1">Somehow, he made it. The air was choking, the speed sending his heartbeat into a frenzy and the machine kept jumping threateningly under his hands, but he was <em>flying</em> and even with the roar of enemy planes behind him, he was <em>free</em>.</p><p class="p1">Steve felt dizzy with the success of it. For the first time in two months, he had a chance. There still wasn't a plan, but there was a vague intention he kept in his mind to follow the coast - or there was, until the winds changed and he got swept further out to sea losing the planes on his tail. He watched Maru's guards follow with boats for a while, but those got lost to fog and nightfall soon as well and then finally, finally, he was alone, flying free and directionless through the darkening sky.</p><p class="p1">There wasn't a map. When he finally dragged himself to look, the compass in the dashboard was spinning wildly. He hadn't made a good choice in escape crafts either - the fuel-tank had started out low and had dropped to dangerously little by the time he started to shiver in earnest from the cold.</p><p class="p1"><em>God</em>, thought Steve, but he didn't really get further that time either. He was so tired - the adrenaline had left him now and taken all the warmth with it. He couldn't believe how tired he was. So bloody tired. A lifetime worth of tired. A lifetime worth of <em>hurt</em>. And for what - a notebook, some new scars, another countless drop in the vast ocean that was this <em>stupid war</em>?</p><p class="p1">The waves beneath him were black and endless. A void larger than even the tired in him. It felt like a good place to die. There was no real point in trying to get back and nobody would ever find him out here anyway. He would get his peace. He wouldn't die on his back in the sea. There would be no final disgrace on his father’s name, no pity of his own army rolling his corpse over in the dirt and saying <em>look at his scars, the bitch had it coming</em>. Steve would slip away just as he came about - alone and forgotten, just another nameless face lost to the call of victory.</p><p class="p1">He ripped a strip of cloth from his stolen uniform and tied the steering column in place, nice and level. From the emergency kit under the seat, he wrapped Maru’s journal in something that looked waterproof and tucked it back inside the metal box. Maybe it would wash up somewhere one day, maybe it wouldn't. At least he tried.</p><p class="p1">He leaned back. It was hard to breathe up here, hard to think past the noise, but the clouds had begun to clear and Steve could see the stars, bright and not as far away as they usually were.</p><p class="p1">It was not the worst view in the world. He watched until the plane started to dip and then he closed his eyes.</p>
<hr/><p class="p1">Somewhere between hitting the water like a blow to the head and realizing he was out of air, Steve came to the conclusion that he wanted to live. Life had been shit, but he deserved better than this. He didn't want to be forgotten.</p><p class="p1"><em>Please, God</em>, he begged, howled, screamed, in a mind that felt like it was burning as he sank, clawing at nothing for a hold that wasn't there. <em>Please, God, help me</em>-</p><p class="p1">Something grabbed him around the chest. It cut through the straps pinning him down and hauled him towards the shining ceiling of the ocean's surface.</p><p class="p1">It wasn't God.</p>
<hr/><p class="p1">His first sight of his saviour was confused, muddled and all the more terrifying for it. He was choking on the ocean and his chest was burning and everything felt like he had been wrapped in lead, but a body lifted him up like he weighed nothing all the same, slinging him over one shoulder as he was dragged out of the black waves like a storm breaking on land.</p><p class="p1">On night-darkened sand, he was put down and there he set to heaving up seawater. He couldn't lift his head up under the weight of what he'd nearly done, of what had nearly happened, but eventually he collapsed in the sand and rolled over, the fight having finally left his body and now wondering exactly who had bothered to save a worthless army omega daring to die.</p><p class="p1">The sight he saw would be burned into his memory for the rest of his days. The woman - the alpha, for there could be no doubt even through his scentless, salt-burned nose - was gorgeous beyond measure. She was staggeringly tall and flawlessly shaped, her bare skin a light but rich earthy brown, rounds of curled black hair falling across her broad back. The only thing she seemed to be wearing was a dripping, short white dress belted at the waist and clinched at the shoulders, that stuck to her body from the water and let Steve see every coiled muscle as she moved to crouch over him, her bare feet perfectly poised in the sand and legs bulging with the strength evident under her skin.</p><p class="p1">Her eyes were dark and piercing. It was impossible to tell for sure in only the light of the moon and his muddled state, but for a moment - he could have sworn her eyes flashed like a cat's in the dark as they stole his breath away, pupils an odd, inhuman shape before the light shifted and he couldn't tell anymore. Up close, he could feel a warming heat radiating from her and vaguely smell a spiced scent through the salt that was half <em>alpha</em> and half something he didn't quite regonize.</p><p class="p1">The part of him that was nothing more than raw, omega instinct particularly moaned as if he was in heat at the sight of it all, at the way she pressed a warm, strong hand to his arm to help shift him so he could breath better. He let her roll him over, even though he would have bucked at another alpha doing the same, and watched as if from afar as she drew gentle fingers across his brow, to brush the wet hair from his eyes. When he let her, she smiled at him, a bright, beautiful thing that softened her serious face into something that would have made him melt if he hadn't spent so many years willing himself not too, and that also revealed the edges of her teeth.</p><p class="p1">They were unusually long and sharp, he noted. That seemed odd. And the longer he thought about it, the more he began to feel as if everything about this was odd, as if maybe this wasn't really happening and maybe right now Steve was actually drowning or had drowned, and his mind just hadn't really realized. Or maybe, it had, and this right now was death and she was just some watcher - an angel or a demon, perhaps, for surely no mortal was this beautiful- commanded to stand guard over him as someone elsewhere tallied up all those marks on him and tried to figure out how many of his sins they could forgive and how many of them they couldn't before they settled on where he would go.</p><p class="p1"><em>Please</em>, he thought desperately, because he didn't think he could take it if all there was in the end was more suffering, for ever and ever more, and maybe he said it aloud or maybe he really was was dead and she heard it anyway, because she said "please?" back at him, in a thickly burred voice that rolled off her tongue like spools of smooth, warm silk heaped upon him and that, there, might have been the last thing he could take - because all that Steve could do under a voice like that was sink back into the sand and shake under her hand, hoping against hope that eternal damnation wasn't his fate after all.</p><p class="p1">The last thing he saw before he sank down into the dark was a soft, concerned frown on her beautiful face as she leaned over him. He fell into sleep or death or damnation with an alpha's hand on his brow and for the first time since he was a child - he didn't fear the touch at all. Maybe he was safe. Maybe he had finally been saved. Just maybe-</p>
<hr/><p class="p1">But Steve wasn't that lucky. He never had been.</p>
<hr/><p class="p2">He woke being dragged away and for a moment Steve thought he was back in Maru's laboratory before he recalled his flight and remembered he was free - that these couldn't be the Turkish guards. He thrashed on instinct anyway and was shook into stillness in return by an impossibly strong grip on one of his arms. He blinked, eyes still stinging from the salt-water, before the scene around him settled. He wasn't on the beach anymore; he was being dragged down a cobbled road, dark except for the occasional brazier of green-tinged fire flickering shadows across old, stone buildings. As his gaze slowly focused, he began to pick out shapes within those shadows - tall figures lurking in corners and alleyways with eyes turned red by the firelight, nearly demonic in the way they loomed.</p><p class="p1">The pain in him began to filter back in though and as he groaned Steve realized - there was no way he was dead. There was no way they were really demons. He could feel every fragile part of his body shivering with the side effects of Maru and the results of his fall into the sea. His heart was still beating wildly in his chest and his lungs were still struggling to breath and his head was <em>throbbing</em>, because he'd fallen hundreds of feet out of the sky and there just wasn't any way that even hell would let him feel all this. There wasn't any point in torturing him if he couldn't even tell the new pain from the old. He must be alive.</p><p class="p1">Someone said something above him that he couldn't make out or understand and then he heard a voice he recognized; the heavy but soft rumble of his rescuer. "Be still," she said, and he turned sluggishly towards the sound to look at her. He was being dragged between two figures he couldn't really make out in the dark and she was walking behind him, only a little behind his trailing feet, flanked by two others he could see more easily then the shadowed figures around them.</p><p class="p1">These ones were clearly soldiers, he realized. They were women like her - alphas also, from their height and heavy builds, with skin different tones of brown from her - but they wore leather armour overtop their dresses and both of them carried naked swords in their hands. When they realized he was awake and looking, he watched as they visibly coiled themselves up in battle readiness like snakes preparing to strike, their faces turning viciously hard and closed off.</p><p class="p1">The woman between them winced, as she realized the response of her companions, and gave Steve a smile that was almost sheepish in apology. Now that he felt awake, he found it didn't go over as well as it might have the first time - though that didn't stop the empty, cavernous part of him that always wanted a knot from flip-flopping at the gentle look.</p><p class="p1">She was still angelically beautiful, but he was growing more and more certain she must have been a living human being, even though something in him was screaming that something was<em> wrong here.</em> Rationally, he tried to argue, doing his best to ignore the ache in his arms as he was hauled up stone steps into a great, but old-looking building, this was not at all like any afterlife he had ever heard of or guessed at. No demon could be that alluring. No angel would dare to take such a causal form. No, no, this must be somewhere in Syria, perhaps the Ottoman Empire at the worst, and these were just strange people who were going to report him back to the Central Powers or torture him for information and that - that, Steve could handle. He had been there before. He knew how that went. He could handle it, even with the body Maru had left him.</p><p class="p1">Then they dumped him in on a cold stone floor, in a large, cavernous hall lit only by more green-ish fire and he looked up into the shadowed crowd of faces staring back - all tall, powerful looking women looking at him like he was <em>vermin</em> - and he remembered. He had never been that lucky and he wasn't about to be now. God wasn't that kind, for all that Steve had received a stay of execution from one fate tonight. Whatever would happen next-</p><p class="p1">Whatever was going to happen next, it wasn't going to be good.</p><p class="p1">The one that stepped forward, Steve saw, looked everything and nothing like his recuser. She had a regalness and beauty that looked nearly divine, in all honesty - but where the others projected an aura of strangeness and strength, Steve instead felt like kneeling over from the sheer ancient power that emanated from her. She was dressed in rich furs despite the warm evening, her armour edged in gold instead of steel like the others and the bare sword held loosely at her side was decorated with expert craftsmanship. Her long, blonde hair was braided elegantly, laced through with silver, and pinned back by a grand crown Steve had a feeling was not for show - but it was her brilliant golden expression that shook him most. It was an old face dressed only in a frown and a look of hatefulness at his very presence that spoke more of danger that anything he'd seen yet and beneath it, all Steve could do was look away and <em>pray</em>.</p><p class="p1"><em>God</em>, he thought, and felt a strange shiver pass through him, as if he'd been doused in cold water or had suddenly become violently ill. <em>Please, help me</em>.</p><p class="p1">To the side, out of the corner of his eye and half-hidden in shadow, he saw his recuser shift, her gaze focused intently on him and a frown on her face as if she had heard him.</p><p class="p1">The woman in front of him said something in a language he thought vaguely familiar, looking to the guards that still held him as she spoke. It was his recuser who spoke up however, saying only "please" back to her.</p><p class="p1">"Please?" snarled the leader, and there was no doubt in Steve's mind - it was an alpha's snarl, low and guttural as she slowly swung her head back around to look at him, the tip of the sword coming up to point at him. "What do you beg for, man?"</p><p class="p1"><em>Life.</em> Steve thought, trying not to stare at the naked steel held in her hand. <em>Death</em>. He'd seen killings at the hands of an expert swordsman before - they were among the cleanest deaths he'd ever seen, and he had a feeling these women - these alphas? - were most likely very, very much experts in the way they handled their weapons. It was not a bad way to go, all things considering.</p><p class="p1">But Steve was a spy. He'd never been properly paid for it, he'd never been recognized for it, but he had the training and he had the experience and his gut told him to stay silent and say nothing - so he didn't.</p><p class="p1">The woman - the leader - didn't like that. She leaned forward, her face going from a shadowed expression to brightly lit as she stepped off the small dais and came into the radius of the braziers. Her face <em>was</em> old, and scarred nearly as badly as any omega Steve had ever seen - but it was what he had first thought as a tanned tone or perhaps oriental heritage that now stood out as something else; her skin wasn't just a golden hue - it <em>was</em> golden, a metallic edge making the green fire nearly reflect off her features, while the age lines in her face that Steve had picked out now looked like scuff marks on metal and scars that just happened to be where creases would have been.</p><p class="p1">Her teeth when she bared them in a snarl were unusually sharp and long. There was no alpha smell when she leaned in towards him, even though he wasn't sure what else she could be, at that size and with that presence. Her eyes, when he dared a darting glance, were just as strange and dark as the others', turned an inhuman green-black from the fire.</p><p class="p1">"I asked you a question, man," she demanded, the sword coming up to kiss almost gently barely against his chest. "What do you beg for?"</p><p class="p1">The guards on either side of him, an arm in each of their grasps, shifted and tightened their grips, making it clear they would encourage any answering of questions whatever way they were ordered to do so - and Steve had a pretty good idea he knew what sort of persuasion they would use.</p><p class="p1">"N-nothing," he eventually croaked, his voice strained and thin from the salt and the water. "I- I am sorry, I didn't mean to crash here, I was just-"</p><p class="p1">He didn't even know what he had been trying to say, but he knew he didn't want to speak any of his poor ideas aloud. He swallowed his tongue and watched as the leader's eyes narrowed in displeasure.</p><p class="p1">"Your tales are all the same," she scoffed - snarled, with an authority that cowed his omega instincts, "you just got <em>lost</em>, you did not mean to <em>come here</em>-" she said something in that other language and a soldier from somewhere shadowed peeled off and disappeared into the dark. "We will see what your lies reveal, man. What your <em>true</em> mission is."</p><p class="p1">Steve's thoughts went to Maru's journal, still in the lockbox on the plane and now deep underwater. Were these people aligned to the Central Powers? Or Allied? Would they turn him back over to Maru, if he told them what he had?</p><p class="p1">The soldier who'd been sent away came back bearing a golden cord. In the darkened, half-shadowed room, the coiled rope was somehow the brightest thing Steve could see. It seemed to pulse with an odd light, as if it was electric, and looking at it... a strange feeling overcame Steve. He wasn't sure what it was he was feeling, but somehow, he knew he didn't want the damn thing coming anywhere near him.</p><p class="p1">The soldier advanced anyway and the leader gestured carelessly towards Steve as she withdrew her sword. She said something again that he didn't understand and the soldier stepped in front of him, a barrier between this fierce woman and Steve.</p><p class="p1">"Please," said Steve, not knowing what was going to happen but knowing deep, deep down that it wasn't going to be good. "I'm telling the truth, I came here by accident, I was only-"</p><p class="p1">The cord was thrown around his head. The loop dropped down to the base of his throat, just past his collar, and the soldier pulled it near taunt- just tight enough that all he could feel was the strange warmth of it biting into his skin as-</p><p class="p1">As-</p><p class="p1">"Through the will of the God <span class="s1">Hestia</span>, I command you to speak the truth," said the leader, her eyes strange and her voice distant as the world seemed to shift golden and soft around him. "What do you beg for, man?"</p><p class="p1">Steve opened his mouth. And when he spoke the lie, the gold seeping into his veins pulled the truth from him like nails from his fingers in an endless burn that consumed everything, that seared through his skin and left nothing, nothing but gold, gold, <em>gold</em> consuming his vision and his mouth and his mind and his <em>bones</em> and drowning out the endless, helpless scream in his head, the voice behind the true one that could only howl <em>why couldn't he stop why couldn't he lie please God make it stop</em>-</p>
<hr/><p class="p1">But it didn't.</p>
<hr/><p class="p2">When the gold left, there was darkness and quiet for a long time. It took Steve even longer to realize he hadn't really been sleeping - he had been aware of being left alone, he gathered. And now that he had knew that, other things began to seep in as well - he was cold and still somewhat wet, apparently. His throat hurt, like he'd been screaming for a long time. He wasn't lying right either and his collar was digging into his neck - that was the first thing he fixed, shifting his body in slow, exhausting movements to lie better.</p><p class="p1">When he managed to open his eyes, he was met with more darkness. It wasn't a surprise, but it wasn't a relief either. He had the faint sense that he had been bound under that golden rope for a long time, but he wasn't sure for how long and what amount of time had passed after it had let him go. Was this the same night? Was it another day? Or was he underground or in a building, waiting for a sentence to be drawn?</p><p class="p1">In the dark there was a shuffle. Steve tensed but didn't move in response, a sinking feeling going through him. He knew how this went.</p><p class="p1">"Peace," said the voice, and there was a clatter. Light began to shine from somewhere beside him, just out of his range of vision and when he turned his head, very carefully and very slowly, he saw his recuser on the other side of iron bars, an odd lantern full of green-ish fire held in one hand.</p><p class="p1">Beyond her, he couldn't see anything - there wasn't a single light on the walls or a crack of a window or anything that might indicate how long he'd been out or where he was. There was only the very small cell he was slumped in, the bars that separated them and her - an oddly friendly face, all things considering, but still a strange alpha in a strange land.</p><p class="p1">"I mean you no harm," she said, as if guessing his thoughts. When she smiled at him, the green light reflected off her long, sharp eyeteeth. "They will not come for a time yet."</p><p class="p1"><em>But they will come</em>, was the unspoken addition to that statement. Steve felt sick. He had only the vaguest memories of what he had said, what he had- what he had-</p><p class="p1">"I have brought you things," she said, when he didn't say anything. She put the lantern down on the floor and pulled what looked like a bundle of cloth from the side - but opening it revealed bread and maybe meat of some kind and suddenly Steve was <em>ravenous</em>. He wasn't even sure when he'd eaten last.</p><p class="p1">She slid it across the floor and through the bars - far enough in that Steve didn't even really need to move to get it, if he could move at all. Still, it wasn't until she produced a ceramic jar that sloshed with a liquid sound and pushed that through too that he decided to make the effect.</p><p class="p1">She watched every weak movement he made like a tiger watching the goat being led to it's enclosure. Maybe that was what her scent reminded him of, now that he wasn't so dazed and his nose wasn't burning so much. She did smell of alpha, more stronger than some of the others, but beneath it there was a different, nearly primal smell that registered mostly as <em>heat</em> or even only as <em>dangerous</em>. The scent of a predator, of something much more powerful and deadly than he would ever be. He'd smelled scents like that before, from kept creatures in cages, but never before from a <em>person</em> and he found it unsettled him more than even the thought of an alpha just on the other side of the bars.</p><p class="p1">"Where did you come from?" she asked him, as Steve finally managed to bring the roll up to his face and coordinate well enough to eat. "Is it far?"</p><p class="p1">There was a sick feeling in Steve's stomach. He wasn't sure if it was from the question or from the food. "I told you already," he rasped after a swallow, hating how raw his voice was. He would have gone for the jar, but it would have meant parting with the food in his hands and he didn't think he had it in him, now that he had tasted it.</p><p class="p1">"Yes," she dismissed, as if the time he'd spent under that golden cord was only a footnote. "But what is it like?"</p><p class="p1">Perhaps it was the way she said it. Perhaps it was the food. Perhaps he was just tired and not sure if he was dreaming - but he looked up all the same, to really focus on her face, for perhaps the first time since he'd been pulled from the water.</p><p class="p1">She was beautiful. Ethereal. Her face was formed perfectly, in a way that went beyond any natural beauty he'd ever seen. But beneath that, beneath that look, there was something he thought he hadn't noticed the first time. Compared to the scarred and serious faces that had stared at him from the crowd or the ancient weight of the leader, this woman looked... well, almost young, he supposed. There weren't scars on her like the others, no hard edge of... <em>life</em>. Her eyes held no distain, when she looked at him. She looked like she hadn't had the time to learn it yet.</p><p class="p1">"Is it far?" she repeated again, a look that Steve would have said was an almost pup-like curiosity expression. "Is it like here?"</p><p class="p1">"... The place I escaped from?" Steve croaked. He thought he had talked about Maru under the rope, but he had the faintest memory these strangers hadn't been that interested in anything to do with her. But perhaps this one had been, and was taking the chance to ask her questions now.</p><p class="p1">"No." She blinked at him, but otherwise remained eerily still, not even a shake of her head. "I meant where you were birthed. Is it like here?"</p><p class="p1">It had been a while since Steve had been back in England. Longer, really, since he had actually considered it home - but there wasn't another answer to that question and the faint sickness that filled him at the thought was familiar enough anyway.</p><p class="p1">"No," he said eventually, because she was still looking at him, expectantly, waiting for an answer. "It's not like here." He wasn't even sure if that was true, but somehow he knew it wasn't. Maybe it was the fact that despite his chill, he could still feel a warmth in the air, or the way he'd heard the ocean as they'd dragged him up here. England wasn't anything like that - or at least, any parts of it that he remembered.</p><p class="p1">"Is it far?" she asked again, "your homeland?"</p><p class="p1">Somehow, Steve had finished his meagre meal. He wasn't sure how, given how exhausting even a few bites were, but apparently needs must and all that. He risked reaching for the jar instead of answering, gulping down the cool freshwater like he hadn't nearly drowned some hours ago, until suddenly that was gone too.</p><p class="p1">Quelling an urgent sense of disappointment and fear that he might have just gone through preserves meant to last him longer, Steve lowered the jar very slowly and risked a look again at her. Her face was set in a look of eager concentration, as if she couldn't wait to hear what he was going to say.</p><p class="p1">"... yes," he said, "it's- I'm... I'm not... sure, I don't know-" It took effort to pull his thoughts together, to speak as if the omega in him wasn't just yelling to roll over and let her come in. "I... don't know where I am. But- it was very far, from where I was before." Not the furthest he'd been, of course, but Steve thought the multiple frontlines between him and home were probably making it further these days than it had been before.</p><p class="p1">"You wish to return," she said, a glint in her eyes that made his heart sink. Suddenly, everything was thrown into a different light - the lantern, the food, the water, her company late at night... nobody just <em>did that</em>, how could he have been so <em>stupid</em>. "Is your war that way, man?"</p><p class="p1">"Yes," Steve whispered. He wanted to run. He wanted to turn around and press himself against the far wall, abandon this conversation and the fact that he already knew he was going to agree to what she suggested. Anything, anything to survive this and live just a little longer.</p><p class="p1">She leaned forward. Her eyes had gone green-black in the light, like the leader had earlier. Around his throat, Steve felt the memory of the golden burn on his skin, squeezing tighter than a noose.</p><p class="p1">"I can get you out," she said, a promise that threatened to poison, "if you take me to your war."</p><p class="p1">Steve had served thirteen years in the army. He had fallen pray to more alphas than he could ever have counted. He knew how this game was played. He knew how this was going to end. He knew and he answered anyway.</p><p class="p1">"Alright," he whispered to the dark and to his strange rescuer, knowing full well he was agreeing to his own damnation. "I- I can take you. Please, just get me out of here. Please."</p><p class="p1">She smiled at him. This time, Steve was sure; the teeth in her mouth were sharper than any human teeth he'd ever seen before.</p>
<hr/><p class="p2">After she left, it took a surprisingly long time to fall asleep despite his exhaustion. When he finally did, his dreams were broken, raw - he saw flashes of fangs and strange eyes and was buried underneath the waves of the ocean until suddenly he was awake again and it was clearly morning. He could see a faint glow of unwavering, natural sunlight from somewhere - perhaps coming down a staircase or from around a corner, though admittedly he couldn't see it from his angle. Someone must have heard him shifting, because a blank-faced guard turned up a moment later, a sword drawn in one hand.</p><p class="p1">What followed then was surprisingly the standard prisoner arrangement - they led him somewhere else to piss and he was fed something that wasn't that good but would keep him alive and then he was put back into his solitary cell, left alone in the half-dark as they presumably decided his fate.</p><p class="p1">It was lonely, Steve suddenly thought. He'd been surrounded by guards and other prisoners and Maru for <em>months</em>, constantly listening to the sounds of screaming and whimpering and boots on stone and now there was nothing. A silence so deep Steve couldn't even hear the wind that must have been whistling down the coast he'd landed on. He didn't even know where he really was. What direction he'd flown in. What was going to happen to him. What he had agreed to.</p><p class="p1">She had given no plans. No ideas. She hadn't asked for any favours either, but Steve knew that didn't mean anything. Plenty of alphas liked to get him in their debt first, before they asked. She had promised to return, at least, but Steve wasn't sure when that would be and in the mean time there was nothing to do but wait. Wait and think about what he had done.</p><p class="p1">In the end, it was a decent amount of time before anyone came by again. And when they did, Steve realized he had spent hours with a hand to his raw and dry throat, pressing against the tender spot where that strange rope had been bit the night before. His visitor that time was a different guard, much darker skinned and a bit shorter than the previous one - though she was still dressed in the same style of antique armour and carried a similar sword. She repeated the same routine as before in the same moody silence, during what Steve suspected was now midday, and then he was returned to his quiet thoughts, waiting for the axe to fall.</p><p class="p1">It did some hours later. His recuser returned in what Steve was thinking of as late afternoon, bringing with her a woman he could have mistaken for the leader yesterday, if she hadn't been dressed and decorated so vastly differently. She still had the metallic golden skin and the golden blonde hair, her face ancient and scarred, but she carried herself more plainly and walked with a purpose instead of prowling in a display of aggression. The coldness that had been in the leader's expression was absence here as well and instead this one simply had a look of stern authority that spoke of the reason she must be here.</p><p class="p1">With this one, there wasn't the deep, instinctive fear that Steve had felt from the leader, but he admitted there was still plenty of terror in him when she approached the door, holding the golden rope in her hand with a causally that felt dangerous. His rescuer walked just behind her with a new guard, that carefully blank expression back on her face - though it broke for a moment when she turned her head to meet his eye.</p><p class="p1">The rope went around his hand this time. The guard - who must have been a <em>beta </em>from her flat, if heated scent, despite her height and size - had come in to make the small cell hopelessly cramped and pinned him to the ground with ease as the golden woman settled next to him, the cord held lightly in her fingers all the while.</p><p class="p1">The questions yesterday had been blunt. Basic. Things less suited to an interrogation and more to a report or a disinterested conversation. It had been the only mercy Steve had suffered that day, and it was erased now when every question this newcomer asked was of numbers and movements. She didn't care what far-off places he'd come from or why he'd been traveling by their lands. She only wanted to know about the war. She wanted to know the armies involved. She asked which Gods were involved and Steve said, <em>God doesn’t care about that sort of thing</em>. She asked how many ships, she asked how many of the flying things Steve came in, she asked how many horses and Steve replied - he didn't know, he didn't know, he didn't know; too many, too many, too many.</p><p class="p1">Somewhere in the haze of it, he had the sudden realization that she must be in charge of whatever military force they had here - or at least high up enough that she knew what questions to ask. She knew where to press and press she did, until Steve was lost to the golden haze that had fallen over him again and could do nothing but talk - of the fronts, stretching from sea to mountains, of the conflicts in the Ottoman Empire, in Africa, in Arabia, of the German U-Boats and the submarines, the miles and miles and <em>miles</em> of trenches and the guns and the bombs and the <em>gas-</em></p><p class="p1">Somewhere in between everything, he started to beg. He had never been a good omega, but he knew how to beg like one. <em>Please, I promise, I can be good</em>- or at least, that was what he said in his mind, what he <em>meant</em> to say aloud - but it wasn't what came out from the spool of rope that wouldn't let him lie. <em>Please</em>, he wept, <em>I don't want to die</em>. That wasn't a lie. <em>Please, I don't know.</em> That wasn't a lie. <em>Please, let me go, I won't tell anyone that you're here</em>. It wasn't a lie, it wasn't a lie. Please, please, <em>please</em>, he didn't want to die here. He didn't want to die on his back and that was definitely where he was now.</p><p class="p1">He was weeping by the time she - almost gently - took the cord off his burning, burning wrist and left him along. His throat was raw from the endless stream of words and it felt like he couldn't breathe - he could barely remember stopping for air at all, if he thought about it.</p><p class="p1">In the absence of words, he could do nothing by lie there, gasping for breath and trying not to choke on his own sobs. He felt as if he'd been split apart; unspooled by the cord and the way it'd been able to worm through all his defences. He had the horrible feeling that he was a traitor now, for all the things he'd said. The only mercy had been how little he had known - nobody ever told the omegas of a unit anything.</p><p class="p1">Slowly, he became aware of a warmth near him. Of that strong alpha and heated smell. He could have sworn his rescuer had left with the guard and the soldier, but it seemed she had returned at some point and he hadn't noticed. He hadn't even heard her enter the cell.</p><p class="p1">Steve was feeling much less charitable than before and so he felt no shame about turning away as she finally shifted in the dark. Night had fallen again at some point - possibly even during his interrogation. There was a clink that must have been something being set down, and a flare of light as the lantern was uncovered again.</p><p class="p1">Steve looked at the far wall, as if nothing in the world was more important. He knew better than to turn his back on an alpha, but he felt disturbingly unmoored and ill-feeling. Like the gold had pulled him loose from wherever he had been tied up and now he had no choice but to drift, far from anything he knew.</p><p class="p1">And he knew so little. All the questions he'd answered and none of his own had gotten the same courtesy. He didn't know where he was. He didn't know who these people were. He didn't know why he hadn't seen any men or why all of the women were so strange or why they were keeping him prisoner when all he'd done is try to <em>die</em> and <em>why</em>, he didn't know <em>why</em>. <em>God</em>, he thought, an sharp bitterness seeping through, <em>why me? Why is it always me?</em></p><p class="p1">There was no answer. There never was. Steve waited all the same, feeling the distant shaking of his body get closer as he slowly became more aware, until he was able to feel at least a little in control of his own body, if nothing else.</p><p class="p1">His rescuer seemed to notice. She laid a surprisingly gentle - but <em>heavy</em> - hand on his arm, keeping it there even as his skin jumped beneath her fingers, and offered him another jar. He almost didn't want to take it, but his throat had truly begun to ache in earnest and eventually he relented.</p><p class="p1">Her touch was so heavy as he drank. Like she was wearing a lead glove. Steve was usually painfully aware of what it felt like to have an alpha touch him, but he was surprised at the weight of hers. It felt almost unnaturally heavy and she didn't stop touching him until he was finished drinking - and even then, it was only to hand a second one he hadn't seen.</p><p class="p1">He sipped that one more slowly. The salt-burn of the ocean was only just beginning to fade from his senses and even with the dull, earthy aftertaste in the water, it was still a relief beyond anything he could currently imagine.</p><p class="p1">"I," she said eventually, voice soft and heavy in the quiet room, "am called Diana. Do you still wish to leave, man?"</p><p class="p1">There was a part of Steve that wanted to say <em>no</em> on principle. To reject whatever quid pro quo was about to happen. He had escaped Maru. He could probably escape from here too. There were barely any guards and the cell door was clearly old - he could made it, if he really tried.</p><p class="p1">But he knew, deep down, that his odds weren't good if he stayed. He was too weak and they had extracted everything they could think to ask from him in barely a day - there was no use keeping him, short of a hostage exchange they didn't seem interested in or some other use, like labour, that he suspected he was far too frail for now anyway. If he stayed, if he turned her down - that was going to be it. He'd be dead within a week, if not by tomorrow night.</p><p class="p1">So he answered. "Yes," Steve told her. Told... Diana. He was surprised at the name - that wasn't a Turkish or Arabic name. He'd known other Dianas. Maybe he was closer to the Allies then he thought. "I can take you anywhere you want to go if you get me out of here."</p><p class="p1">She smiled at him again. Her teeth were still sharp and a bit too long for regular teeth. Not <em>all</em> of them, but the points were obvious on a few of them, all ones that Steve thought should not have been pointed.</p><p class="p1">It wasn't the only thing that had stood out and now, still halfway filled with the golden glow of the cord that brought out only the truth - a cord that <em>shouldn't</em> have existed, that <em>couldn't</em> - Steve knew it was more than just a family quirk. The golden, metallic shine of his two interrogators couldn't have been makeup - not with the way it'd been over every inch of skin. Eyes shouldn't shine in the dark like that - not eyes in the faces of <em>people</em>. And that <em>smell</em>. Steve had been under enough people from enough places to know that a person didn't <em>smell like that, </em>not even the strongest of alphas. And now-</p><p class="p1">Even with his death hanging over him, Steve couldn't stop himself from opening his mouth and asking. "What are you?"</p><p class="p1">She shifted. It was a roll of muscles that was less the awkward shuffling of a person asked a question they didn't want to answer and more the fluid movement of a predator eyeing its prey. An attack that could have happened and didn't, only because she willed it.</p><p class="p1">She smiled. It was a a predator's smile. "I am an amazon," she said, and in the flash of her eyes and her fangs, burning like fire and glinting like knifes in the green-tinged light, Steve realized she didn't look human at all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Steve's terrible, horrific, no-good, very bad - <em>*checks watch*</em> - several months.</p><p>I dialled Maru's scariness way up in this. I am always a bit annoyed when people write female villains But Really, They're Just Misunderstood™. Women can be sadistic fucks too, if they want to be! Either way, she's a great villain and we're not done with her yet. This story's gonna be long - it's not even summer yet, after all, and Ares died in November. ;)</p><p>(Fuck, I love DC, but I wouldn't trust them with a timeline if my life depended upon it. I have no idea how much time the WW movie covers. I make my own timelines.)</p><p>On the subject of Steve being British instead of American; I've got the memory of a mayfly and when I originally watched the first WW movie, it totally slipped my mind that he was suppose to be American. I just thought London = British Spy and by the time I bothered to check Wikipedia, British!Steve was living rent free in my head. Honestly, I think it works way better anyway.</p><p>A lot of the Amazon worldbuilding is borrowed from the unpublished AU this story is an AU of, and I am not going to lie - I made up most of it. I DID try researching but honestly, there wasn't a lot of info out there on where exactly Diana falls on the 'human to non-human' scale. Most of the fics I read didn't seem to really touch on it either, or were wildly inconsistent in a way that said clearly I wasn't the only one using their own headcanons. So I went a little hog-wild.</p><p>Everything will be revealed in time, but without spoiling too much, the main thing is that Amazons are essentially 'pseudo-human'/'demi-human' or 'human-adjacent' as I like to say, falling into the same category as say... vampires, or werewolves. They outwardly look human, unless you know what you're looking for or you look too closely. Inwardly - they've got a lot of their own biology and mechanics coming into play and things get a lot weirder. I'm not really a big fan of the whole "the gods made Amazons to protect humanity ♥️♥️♥️" angle either, so that came into play.</p><p>This chapter ran a little longer and faster than I meant it to, but it'll slow done quite a bit over the next little while as they get to know each other. Chapter two's them on a boat and THAT's gonna be fun - though I imagine Steve's not going to see it that way. Poor fucker. (': I'm looking forward to it, at least - and it's projecting to be about 15k, once I finish tweaking it! Feb. 1st, folks, see you then.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. the perfect creature rarely seen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><strong>CHAPTER WARNINGS:</strong> inability to escape, persistent perceived threat of violence/non-con, references and flashbacks/nightmares of past violence, torture and non-con, brief physical restrainment, PTSD responses, discussion/references to slavery, weird magical biology, internalized gender/presentation issues, food insecurities, mild overall perilous/survivalist situation (ocean travel).</p><p><strong>SPECIAL NOTE:</strong> both Steve and Diana are currently unreliable narrators and - at least in Steve's case - are thinking the worst of each other. They don't know that, however.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">They stole away that night.</p><p class="p1">Steve had expected some sort of grand plan - he wasn't sure what, exactly, but usually these things involved a lot of bribing of guards and carefully planned routes and in the end, his resc- the wo- <em>Diana</em> simply walked him out.</p><p class="p1">It was later, at least. After her strange declaration, she had only talked briefly of what might be needed for their escape and Steve had been too tired to make any real requests or suggestions and too unsettled to ask any genuine questions. He had told her of Maru's journal in the plane with no real hopes it could be retrieved and then had been left alone for long enough that - even given his racing thoughts - he had been able to sleep for a few hours before she reappeared, preparations apparently done.</p><p class="p1">He had woken up to find her outfitted differently than her simple dress from before. Now she wore the same antique-looking leather armour over plain white fabric and had thrown a faintly faded and somewhat oddly-fashioned red travelling cloak on top of that. She must have left supplies elsewhere, because the only thing she was carrying now was a sword that looked just as long and sharp as the ones he'd seen the others carrying and the same lantern she'd had before.</p><p class="p1">The sword, at least, remained sheathed at her side, which was a small mercy in Steve's opinion. She kept a hand on it however as she unlocked the door and let him out, a careful eye trained on him that showed she was clearly watching for anything she didn't like. Steve was then led on a long, stumbling walk through winding tunnels and empty rooms - some of which were made of carved stone bricks and others that were only natural caves and passages. The only light he saw the whole time was the lantern still clutched in her hand, held out a bit in front of him. Steve's heart pounded the whole way, certain they'd be found from the flickering light alone, but asides from some quick doubling back or sudden changes in direction, Diana gave no indication that she was even worried about them being followed.</p><p class="p1">Eventually - Steve feeling disturbingly worn out from the short trek and beginning to limp more than a little - they emerged suddenly into open air and a quick look around revealed they were on a shoreline, their passage having ended in a short cliff-face. Turning back, Steve could distantly see the shapes of buildings shadowed against the night sky, far along the curve of what he was suspecting was an island. There were few lights on and Steve couldn't see any movement - but that meant little in Steve's experience and so the only real course of action was to follow his rescuer down to the water.</p><p class="p1">Diana had covered the lantern once they'd entered the open air, but Steve was eventually able to find her target in the form of a small boat sitting half in the shallows. It couldn't have been meant for more than one or two people and Steve felt a bit ill at the thought of being trapped on it for who-knew how long with a strange alpha - or <em>whatever</em> she was claiming to be - but he was out of options, as it was, and so in the end he kept his protests to himself and climbed in when she gestured him forward, a hand still on her sword's handle and the lantern now set on the nearest bench.</p><p class="p1">He took the farthest corner in contrast, settling down next to several baskets of what looked like provisions. Out in the open air, he felt a lot colder than he had in his dark cell and far more exposed. He almost jumped off entirely when Diana stepped up against the other end and pushed the boat out into the light waves.</p><p class="p1">The whole thing shifted alarmingly as it hit the open water, and even more so when she finally jumped in a moment or two later, taking up an oar with clear practice. Steve had half a thought to help - but decided not to offer when he found he couldn't really move. Either exhaustion or fear had completely paralyzed him now and he found all he could do was lay on wood that had seen better days, shivering in his ripped and salt-stained stolen clothing. The sky above him was clear, perfect, even, and very at odds with the feeling in his chest, much like the night he'd made his initial escape. But there was nothing he could do about that, so instead Steve watched out of one eye as the island grew smaller and smaller on the horizon, until suddenly, in a blink, it just seemed to disappear all together.</p><p class="p1">The woman - Diana - paused in her rowing and turned back to stare at the now empty sea with what he thought might have been a pleased expression. Apparently she was satisfied with the <em>disappearing island</em>, because she turned back to the small sails and began to rig them up to catch the faint wind.</p><p class="p1">Steve found his voice again and risked a question. "Does- does it usually do that?"</p><p class="p1">"Yes," Diana said, her focus still on the maze of ropes and lines above her head as she tugged on one of them. "It is hidden from all so that it may remain secret."</p><p class="p1">"Are... you going to be able to find it again later?" he asked. He had decided he wasn't getting up to help because he didn't know anything about sailing and not because he already felt a bit ill from the rocking of the boat. He probably wouldn't be of any help anyway.</p><p class="p1">"Of course," Diana said, sounding strangely offended at the question, "all amazons can find their way back to our queen, no matter where she is."</p><p class="p1">That, Steve thought, really raised more questions than it answered and he decided to leave them unasked. "Are... they going to notice we're gone right away?"</p><p class="p1">Diana hummed a noise that didn't mean anything to Steve. She had apparently gotten what she wanted out of the sails, because she sat back down, turning her strange gaze to him.</p><p class="p1">"Most likely," she eventually said, "but I do not believe we will be followed for a time. There has been talk of my trials much of late and I ensured others heard me speak of it before I left." She paused for a moment, looking across the waves, and then turned back to causally add, "a queen's heir must undergo her trails without aid, to prove she can stand alone as a leader. It would be unheard of for them to follow."</p><p class="p1">... <em>Shite</em>. Several things clicked into place. The crown in the golden leader's hair. The authority of a high-ranking soldier who was <em>clearly</em> related to her. The ease in which this young and visibly untested woman had been allowed to be present or involved in all his interrogations, despite obviously not having the rank or experience to do so. Nobody had questioned her presence near his cell because this woman was apparently <em>royalty</em> and Steve was apparently <em>fucked</em>.</p><p class="p1">"Peace," said Diana, clearly picking up on his sudden panic. "My trials are mine and mine alone. You will guide me to this war so I may prove my worth, but I expect nothing more from you than that." That, apparently, had been her plan, based upon the pleased expression she was wearing when she reached down to uncover the lantern again.</p><p class="p1">Looking at the lantern with fresh eyes, Steve admitted he'd been generous in considering the flames only green-tinged before. Out here, with no light source but the stars and the faint sliver of the moon, it was clear the fire had no yellows or oranges in its colour - and the tiny flame seemed to be burning without a fuel source that he could see. It was another strange fact that was stacking up with many others and in the face of it, Steve felt... overwhelmed, perhaps. Or exhausted. He couldn't really tell. Every nerve in his body felt as if it was screaming but the soundless noise was so overwhelming that he had gone numb against it. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to close his eyes and open them to discover this whole thing had been a strange fever dream that had occurred as he had been lying in some stinking hospital tent somewhere. He'd take a rampaging infection against the reality that this was actually happening and that all of this was <em>real</em>.</p><p class="p1">Especially because if what Diana said was true, he would most likely be facing down an enraged queen when they realized their princess was missing. Steve had seen this one play out before - he'd watched plenty of superior officers dismiss native leaders at first, only to later learn the hard way that just because Britain didn’t recognize them didn’t mean their power was any less real. There was a very real chance he was probably already damned and the realization was settling uncomfortably over him now that he'd had time to think on it.</p><p class="p1">And that wasn't even touching the perhaps somewhat more sensible part of Steve that was painfully aware of the immediate danger as well.He was weaponless and defenceless on a tiny boat with an alpha who <em>was</em> armed and presumably used to her royal privilege getting her what she wanted. And she was, Steve admitted, perhaps one of the largest alphas he'd <em>ever</em> seen, excluding the other members of her village. She'd lifted him over her shoulder without issue when she'd saved him and the guard in his cell had managed to pin him down alone more thoroughly than three men usually could. If she and Diana were of a size and strength - which they <em>looked </em>to be - then it was likely Diana was just as strong and just capable of doing the same, even if she didn't bother with that sword of hers.</p><p class="p1">It would only be a matter of time before she got bored. Like the soldiers that had 'captured' him had, like his own units usually did, like the guards in Maru's laboratory had, like the dozens of his superior offices had, like a hundred, like a <em>thousand</em> alphas Steve had known. She was stronger and bigger and <em>royalty</em> and Steve was trapped with her on a tiny boat on the open water. Even if all she had been planning was for him to guide her to somewhere she could pick a few fights, she would get bored eventually. They always did. And when she did-</p><p class="p1">Well.</p><p class="p1">There was no game Steve knew better than the one that came with being an omega. He'd been made to play it for a long time and so in the end, he did the only thing he could do in the face of it. He wrapped the tattered remains of his stolen, too-large coat around him and he curled up in his tiny corner, forcing his eyes closed even with the alpha just across from him.</p><p class="p1">If she was going to do anything, Steve figured, he was going to sleep first. And then maybe- just maybe, he would be able to think of a plan and figure out a way to get her sweet on him. That could work, Steve thought. He wasn't a spy for nothing. He could get one young and clearly impulsive alpha to listen to him. He'd done it before. He could do it again.</p><p class="p1">He could get Diana to let him go. He had to. It was his last thought before exhaustion finally claimed him.</p><hr/><p class="p1">He didn't really dream. Or maybe he did. There was no screaming in his mind that night. No flashes of mortars or gunfire. No ghost touches of alphas against his skin. Instead, one image played back and again, half memory and half nightmare. He was kneeling in the grand hall he'd met the queen in. There was no one there - or at least he thought there wasn't. It was completely empty but for the braziers of the strange green fire and so silent Steve thought he should have been able to hear his own heartbeat - except even that was silent too, in this strange, empty, noiseless room.</p><p class="p1"><em>God</em>, Steve thought, <em>please help me</em>. The braziers spat soundlessly and the flames snapped and twisted. <em>God</em>, Steve thought, <em>please help me</em>. The shadows on the walls seemed to move and shift with sharp, violent movements. <em>God</em>, Steve thought, <em>please help me</em>. A painful sensation was filling his frozen limbs, but it didn't feel like his at all. <em>God</em>, Steve thought, <em>please help me.</em> It felt like rage. Rage that wasn't his. Rage from something else.<em> God</em>, Steve thought, <em>please help me-</em></p><p class="p1">The room screamed. It didn't make a sound at all. But it screamed all the same for a very long time. It was so very angry.</p><hr/><p class="p1">The sky was very bright out when he finally woke up. Brighter than dawn ought to be and it was to Steve's great surprise that he realized he'd slept long past it, when he finally lifted his head and found the sun nearly overhead. He could count on one hand the number of truly uninterrupted nights of sleep he'd gotten in the past two years easily and last night- well, apparently that had been one of them. He didn't remember waking at all during the night and clearly his rescuer had left him alone long enough for him to drop far down.</p><p class="p1">He had the vaguest sense of a dream. An empty room that hadn't felt entirely empty and that had been silent even when it wasn't. He shook his head and winced at the throb that went through it - he hadn't drank or ate anything in hours and under a sun that was heating up very quickly, he was feeling it.</p><p class="p1">"Are you well?" asked the beautiful voice behind him and Steve winced again. A half-turn revealed Diana, still sitting at the far end of the boat and somewhat more undone than she'd been the night before. It looked like a bag's worth of contents were scattered around her and the cloak and some of her armour had been taken off at some point.</p><p class="p1">Her sword and a not insignificant number of knives was spread across one of the cross boards in front of her. He thought she had one of the blades in her hand and what looked like a stone in another. Cleaning, if he had to guess, though the sight made him more than a bit nervous. He hadn't realized she had <em>that</em> many weapons on her.</p><p class="p1">"Yes," he eventually answered - or tried to. It came out as more of a croak and she must have frowned at him - though it was hard to tell, in all honesty. The sun was punishingly bright and reflecting off the waves in a dazzle of colour that felt like it was blinding him, or at the very least stabbing him in the eyes.</p><p class="p1">"Here," Diana said, and the boat rocked as she moved. Steve scrambled for a hold and ended up clinging to the side as the motion made his head throb again. <em>God</em>, he should have draped something over himself before he slept, he could<em> feel</em> his skin burning.</p><p class="p1">Something appeared in his line of sight. It looked like a misshaped pottery cup or small jar and it was edging slowly closer and closer to his face, before eventually Steve took it and raised it up enough to see it full of water. He was just aware enough to sip on it slowly this time - they probably had limited rations and if they hadn't hit shore yet, then Steve didn't know how long it was going to take.</p><p class="p1">"You do not look well," Diana said, something that sounded alarmingly like concern in her voice. "I am... not familiar with men. Do you usually sleep for so long?"</p><p class="p1">"Sometimes," Steve croaked. He had dropped his head to stare at the boards at the bottom of the boat and he was beginning to think it would be a good way to spend the whole day. In hindsight, perhaps looking up to the sunny sky after countless weeks spent in a windowless laboratory and a good day or two spent underground hadn't been the best idea. "I'll... be fine soon."</p><p class="p1">She made a noise he couldn't really identify. It sounded somewhat concerned but Steve thought it couldn't have been. She had just met him and she was an alpha asides. They were never <em>really</em> concerned about omegas. Not in any way that mattered or helped.</p><p class="p1">"... do you wish to eat?" Diana asked, after a long silent moment, as he finished the water she'd given him. "I could not bring many provisions for you, but I believe I have gotten you enough to last until we reach the land of men."</p><p class="p1">A part of Steve considered that there was probably plenty of useful information in that sentence if only he could think hard enough to pull it apart, but even the <em>thought</em> of thinking was painful and so he decided to leave whatever she meant by <em>land of men</em> until later. It could wait until after he had eaten.</p><p class="p1">God, he wanted to eat something so bad. And his stomach got to answer before he did, in a noise that was surprisingly loud in the open space.</p><p class="p1">He winced in faint embarrassment. And then had to school his face a little bit as his recuser gave him a strange look of... almost horror? That was a bit of an extreme reaction - he hadn't had a stable meal since <em>February</em>, she'd be in the same boat if it was her.</p><p class="p1">"... yes," Steve said eventually, when she continued to give him that strange look. "I- if there's food. That would... be nice." He swallowed, his mouth already feeling dry despite the water. Would she ask for something in return for it? She must have been awake for hours, to be bored enough to start on all her weapons. Surely she wanted him by this point. Or at least <em>expected it</em>.</p><p class="p1">Diana finally tore her gaze away from him and turned to the various baskets half-hidden around her. Steve took the chance to breath, trying to remind himself that this wasn't anything he hadn't done before and he knew how to do it well. She was clearly young, or at least inexperienced, he could play on that well enough if he just... if he could just...</p><p class="p1">He didn't want to though. He had just woken up from his longest sleep in months and at the moment the most alluring prospect was going right back to continue it. Anything to be anywhere but here, on this tiny little prison of a boat.</p><p class="p1">"Here," said Diana, emerging from her investigation with something wrapped in cloth. "You were meant to eat this when the sun rose but you did not rise then and I..." she trailed off, making another noise Steve couldn't really peg. "I thought it best not to wake you. In case you were healing."</p><p class="p1">Then she thrust the bundle towards him, her arm outstretched to its fullest length like she didn't want to be near him. It was a startling enough action that Steve just blinked at her for a moment, until she seemed to realize it was odd and put the bundle down on the bench in front of him.</p><p class="p1">Looking down at it, Steve had to admit that his concern she would use the food she had as leverage for a 'bargain' of some sort were probably less likely than he had thought. That, or she had never once even seen proper courting rituals of <em>any</em> kind carried out, her own people's variations included, because that was probably the worst version of <em>I gave you food so you should give me something to knot</em> that Steve had <em>ever</em> seen in his life. Even the poorest examples of half-arsed courting behaviours still had enough finesse to them to show the ideal alpha-provides-for-omega relationship they were suppose to showcase, even if most of the time the food was shite rations and the words were mostly thinly-veiled metaphors and leers.</p><p class="p1">"... Thank you," Steve said after a moment. He waited a moment to make sure she wasn't about to launch into a speech or gestured demonstration on how he could properly thank her before he took it and unwrapped the bundle to find what looked like a more travel-friendly version of the meals he'd been brought before. It was hardly the most appealing of breakfasts - but at the moment, Steve thought he hadn't seen anything that good in <em>years</em>.</p><p class="p1">It took him about halfway through a very, very slow savouring of it to realize Diana hadn't taken anything out to eat either and seemed to be watching him with a... <em>strange</em> expression he couldn't quite place.</p><p class="p1">"... did you want some?" he asked carefully, well away that most of the responses to that were probably not ones he wanted. But he very much did not want her looking at him like that and would really rather she just said she <em>wanted something else</em> so he could get it over with.</p><p class="p1">But that wasn't what she said.</p><p class="p1">"No," Diana replied, finally sitting up straighter and breaking her strange staring. "My people do not hunger. I have never met anyone who does. It must be terrible to be bound so."</p><p class="p1"><em>What</em>. Steve thought. <em>The fuck?</em></p><p class="p1">"Fear not," she added, as he sat frozen, trying to process what he'd heard and what she <em>meant by it</em>. "I was taught how to care for men, it should not be difficult to keep you alive."</p><p class="p1">The urge for that nap had returned in full force. Maybe that would help, because clearly he'd hit his head harder than he thought in that crash. <em>She thought she didn't need to eat</em>.</p><p class="p1">He should have taken his chances with the Turks.</p><hr/><p class="p1">The resulting day that followed, was perhaps one of the strangest and most baffling of Steve's <em>whole life</em>.</p><p class="p1">In the light of day and without immediate threat of interrogation or death, Diana was less ethereally beautiful and more... ethereally strange. Not that she wasn't beautiful, Steve was forced to admit. He might not have <em>liked</em> alphas, but the omega in him did plenty and even the part of him that was just himself realized objectively that plenty of people would have killed to have had even a fraction of her alluring presence. Her skin - of which he quickly saw too much - was flawless and evenly coloured without a single blemish beyond the occasional, very minor scar. Every line of her body seemed perfectly shaped and he had begun to suspect she couldn't have slouched if she'd tried. Even her hair seemed to be <em>perfect</em>, which was not something Steve thought he would have ever had an opinion. No, Diana was absolutely beautiful.</p><p class="p1">It was the rest of it that was... getting to him.</p><p class="p1">Diana said she didn't need to eat. Then, some hours later, when she doled out another ration of water for him, she revealed she didn't need to drink either, with not so much as a <em>by your leave</em>.</p><p class="p1">Steve, who'd risked taking off his stolen jacket to drape the tattered thing over his head and shoulders, was more annoyed and strangely jealous at the idea than angry at what must have been a lie. <em>Didn't need to drink</em>. God, how many days had he spent stuck in cells or tied to a bed while some alpha rutted into him, cursing the fact that he'd do <em>anything</em> for a drink of water and wouldn't somebody just <em>remember that?</em></p><p class="p1">She didn't seem to fear the sun either. She asked as to why he'd hidden himself under his own clothing and seemed baffled when he'd pointed out that he had burnt skin from the sun. Apparently, when she filled him in, <em>amazons didn't suffer from such inflictions</em>. How someone had lived their entire lives by the sea and not gotten a single sunburn, Steve didn't know - but he wasn't happy about it.</p><p class="p1">The shuffle to figure out how to take care of business on a boat far too small for any form of privacy was an embarrassing one he could have done without as well. It didn't help that she seemed strangely unnerved by the whole idea, or that when he finally stuttered through a proper request, she causally mentioned that her people <em>didn't do that</em> either.</p><p class="p1">He didn't talk to her for a while after that. It was mostly the principle of the thing. But he was forced to when she suddenly remembered something and became frantic, searching among the belongings around her until she emerged again holding the box he'd stuffed Maru's journal into.</p><p class="p1">Staring at the thing, Steve almost couldn't breathe. <em>How?</em> He had gone deep enough under the water that the plane must have sunk even further - how had she gotten it?</p><p class="p1">"An amazon can go without breathing for much longer than a man can," she said, somewhat smug about this one as before she handed it over. The sun had gotten behind them, a little, and Steve was able to see her face better now that the glaring sun had subsided. Her beautiful, beautiful face and every inch of its holier-than-thou superiorness, topped with a circlet he had only noticed once the glare had faded off the waves.</p><p class="p1">Her eyes weren't nearly as strange as he'd thought in the sunlight, he did note. Though there was still something <em>off</em> about them he couldn't quite place his finger on. Her teeth, however, were just as long and sharp as ever when she smiled at him, and he only stopped himself from shivering from the sight by sheer force of will. They looked <em>lethal</em>. Dangerous. Why were they like that? How had they gotten that way - a quirk of some family line? What would teeth like that feel like digging into his skin?</p><p class="p1">That last thought <em>did</em> make him shiver. Diana didn't seem to notice as she left the box on the plank Steve had mentally named the hand-over bench and then sat back, staring expectantly at it and him with a blatant curiosity.</p><p class="p1">He didn't entirely blame her for that one. Clearly, she had dived for it herself at some point and hadn't bothered to open it; the curiosity was only natural. Steve was still careful to take it slowly when he did, and even more careful to make sure the box was positioned so only he could see inside when he finally opened it.</p><p class="p1">It was still a bit damp inside, despite the heat and the sun. But the journal was there, wrapped in its oily, translucent cloth and looking to have survived the worst of the damage. He picked it up with trembling fingers - it felt impossibly fragile now, for some reason. Perhaps he had been more aware than he'd thought that he wasn't likely to survive his escape attempt - now that the potential was there to survive this and get this to <em>someone</em> who could use it, Steve felt wrong for even touching the thing.</p><p class="p1">But he had to check. He was barely aware of Diana watching him as he unwrapped the journal and began to carefully flip through it. He hadn't really looked the first time. Long enough to check and make sure he <em>had</em> what he thought he had, but nothing more than that really. He hadn't even bothered on his flight away.</p><p class="p1">Now, looking at it with fresh eyes, he felt ill at the thought of everything in these pages. The secrets Maru must have kept in here. Most of it, unfortunately - or fortunately - was written in a language he didn't regonize, but he caught bits here and there; scatterings of Spanish or German, a bit of Turkish. Things in other languages he would guess were names, written out of context for the sake of accuracy - that was good, he thought. There was a chance of decoding it if she might have left a starting point. Maybe even a chance at picking up something important without decoding it at all.</p><p class="p1">But the rest - Steve didn't have the faintest clue. Numbers or chemical symbols, perhaps? Pages of dates with little else? One page was mostly stains. Another had a little drawing of - a bracelet? God, had she been <em>courting</em> some poor bastard? Some of it cut off in the middle of a sentence or even a <em>word</em> by the looks of it. Some of it looked like it hadn't been started at all, blank pages or sections in the middle of logs that resumed later.</p><p class="p1">Clearly, Steve realized with some irritation, Isabel Maru was more concerned with practicing her awful science on her test subjects than actually <em>writing </em>any of it down. Where it would have been <em>useful</em>. Or presented in a way he could <em>read</em>.</p><p class="p1">It would have been the least she could have done, really. Was it too much to ask for, that his torturer conveniently leave all the details of what she was doing somewhere he could find it?</p><p class="p1">"Is that it?" Diana asked, sounding strangely normal and rather bothered by the fact that the only thing of importance wasn't anything a young soldier would be interested in. "Why do you need it?"</p><p class="p1">"It contains secrets of my country's enemy," Steve said, feeling safe enough in saying that. He rewrapped the journal carefully, not particularly liking the way Diana was eyeing it now - as if it would bite her. "It's very important it stays safe," he added, hoping he hadn't pushed too far when she made a noise that was clearly irritation.</p><p class="p1">"Of course," she said, turning to look over the water with a face he thought meant she was trying very hard to keep serious. "I understand the secrets of war," she added, which was clearly an indication she did not.</p><p class="p1">Steve made a noise back he hoped she read as 'agreeing' and took the chance to look at what else was in the lockbox while she was distracted. It had a number of things in it he hadn't pay attention to the first time - a cheap looking compass, some basic survival bits, something that might have been a can opener and - mercies of all mercies - a tiny, little, somewhat scratched pocket knife.</p><p class="p1">Steve didn't have a knife on him. He hadn't managed to grab one in his hurried escape. But he should have - he'd carried one his whole service, since he'd been fifteen and an older omega had pressed one in his hand, showing him how to use it and telling him when he could. It'd saved his damn life more than once, over the years.</p><p class="p1">When he discreetly checked, his rescuer was still looking over the waves, trying to protect an air of bored disinterest that Steve could clearly see was faked. Very carefully, he made a careless shifting motion through the box and discreetly slipped the knife into his sleeve as he lowered the box. Diana didn't need to know.</p><p class="p1">"Here," he said, placing the box on the hand-over bench. She clearly hadn't looked at it before, and it was unlikely she would notice the weight of one small object missing, considering he hadn't put the journal back in. "You can look at the rest of it if you want."</p><p class="p1">Considering the speed at which she turned back and eagerly took the box from him - that was what she had been hoping he'd say. She didn't even bother pulling herself all the way back to her side - instead settling more in the middle of the boat as she poured over objects she clearly hadn't seen before.</p><p class="p1">It wasn't the first time Steve had met someone who wasn't familiar with technology or tools from somewhere - and he'd run into it himself once or twice, fairly enough, but there was something different about watching Diana look. He wasn't sure exactly, at first, but as he watched and very slowly began to name things as she pulled them out and asked him too, he managed to put his finger on it. Diana <em>did</em> regonize some of these things, even if she didn't know what they were called. She had seen some of them before - a fact which raised another, less pleasant question in Steve's mind.</p><p class="p1">If men carrying these things had come to her island before, clearly none of them had lived long enough to talk about compasses. And certainly none of them had lived long enough to return and spread the story of terrifying women calling themselves amazons.</p><p class="p1">Which meant Steve's chances weren't good.</p><p class="p1">Not good at all.</p><hr/><p class="p1">In the end, Diana didn't eat or drink anything the whole day. It irritated Steve in some way he couldn't pinpoint until eventually he got tired enough not to care and left it be. She <em>did</em> feed him, at the very least and the effect of getting two good meals in a row had done enough that he was even willing to consider that maybe she <em>wasn't</em> going to immediately have her way with him and then dump him overboard to drown. It didn't help, however, that the rest of their conversations were equally strange and unsettling in ways he couldn't completely name and eventually he gave up the attempt entirely, when the sun finally sank below the waves.</p><p class="p1">"Do you want me to take a shift sailing while you sleep?" he dared ask. He didn't particularly <em>want</em> to, not with the way his very body felt like it was about to fall sleep even while he was wide awake, but it was... the decent thing to do, he supposed. She hadn't let him row all day, though Steve thought that might have been because he very clearly looked like physical labour would make him kneel over.</p><p class="p1">"I do not need to sleep," Diana had said in response, giving him a look that said clearly he was suppose to have guessed that already - and alright, maybe he should have. <em>Of course</em> the beautiful, stunning woman who had no need for food or drink and had apparently never broken a sweat, gotten a sunburn or needed to piss over the side of a boat in her life <em>didn't need to sleep either</em>.</p><p class="p1">That was fine with Steve. She could be that way. More sleep for him. Who even cared if she eventually fell over from sleep deprivation? He certainly wouldn't - might even do him a favour.</p><p class="p1">He didn't say that aloud as he got her to turn around for a moment's privacy one final time and then he moodily crawled into his little hollow of supplies that <em>definitely</em> weren't giving him some nice nesting feelings. He made sure to pull the jacket back over his head, incase he slept longer again. It had the added benefit that he couldn't see Diana do anything else strange, a fact he was willing to accept even if it meant he couldn't see her coming either. He didn't think he could handle anything else odd today.</p><p class="p1">His dreams were just the regular, fragmented type again, that night - of which he was quite grateful for, in all honesty. There was something strangely comforting about his old routine; he dreamt of alphas, sometimes violently, sometimes not at all, and woke up when it got too much to check in the faint glow of the green lantern that Diana hadn't crawled on top of him while he hadn't been paying attention, and then he rolled back over and did it again, repeating the pattern over and over again until eventually the sky lightened into dawn and he was willing to give up the attempt for unbroken sleep.</p><p class="p1">His last round of dreams kept him from wanting to return to try as well. Steve had been dreaming of some alpha he vaguely recognized from a base before the war, but the dream had changed and the last thing he had seen before he had woken up was Diana, sinking those sharp teeth into him. The aftereffects lingered longer than they should have - especially the whining, omega part of him had made sure he woke up with his stomach tingling like it usually did right before it slicked him up.</p><p class="p1">He lay there mulishly, half-away of Diana watching him - <em>of course</em> she was awake, why wouldn't she be? - but mostly thinking of the worst things he could until the empty part of him didn't feel so large or like it was about to wet his thighs if he moved.</p><p class="p1">She might not bite him. Steve knew that. Alphas didn't <em>always</em> bite, admittedly, and betas weren't as likely to try either. He'd even heard that alpha women bit less overall - though he wasn't sure how much of that was rumour and he hadn't had enough experience to say for sure. Still, he hated the feel of teeth in him, and he was willing to admit it was the only real reason he hadn't long-since figured out how to break the welding job on his collar. The bloody thing might have been more trouble than it was worth most of the time, but it did its intended job well enough; the high leather band covered and dulled the soft points on his neck that would have let someone scruff him in an instant otherwise, while the metal band around the centre of the thing prevented anyone from delivering a <em>true</em> bite on the mating point and forming a bond he wouldn't be able to shake.</p><p class="p1">He knew that was why they had put the damn thing on him, though the reality of it was that the leather was still thin enough to let anyone who felt like putting some effort in pin him or send him floating down if they wanted to and while the metal might have kept a bonding mark from forming, it did nothing for the fact that alphas <em>did </em>like to bite when they got the chance.</p><p class="p1">Steve had had an omega colleague help him with a mirror once, a while back after a particularly brutal deployment in a trench that had left him alone with far, far too many bored soldiers for far, far too long. He'd seen the bite scars all along his shoulders for the first time in years, where dozens of alphas and betas had gone for the second best option. Who knew how many sets of teeth had left their mark. Who knew if Diana wanted to add hers to the collection.</p><p class="p1"><em>It was just a stupid dream</em>, Steve thought. The damn omega in him.</p><hr/><p class="p1">That day was worst. Or maybe better. It felt worst and Steve felt worst for it, but maybe a rhyme of sorts had emerged. They underwent a shuffling of an established routine and when Diana asked about the compass again, Steve showed her how it worked, which meant he managed to get a good look at it and the way they were going. Diana, despite clearly having no means to navigate, seemed to know where she wanted to go, though she did not share that destination with Steve and the only conceivable method he saw was that she kept sticking her face into the wind when it picked up anew. In the end, all he got out of that talk was that this was his second day at sea and they were going in a north-west direction at a good pace.</p><p class="p1">He didn't bother asking where they were going. He didn't think that was going to fall under things to tell your possible-guide-possible-prisoner.</p><p class="p1">The main point of contention, he knew, had nothing to do with Diana. The boat was just so <em>bloody small</em>. There was nowhere to go. Nothing to do. He couldn't even really move properly, not without getting too close or jeopardizing their stability. His whole body had begun to feel stiff and cramped from the inactivity, his aches and wounds from Maru made all the worst from the inability to stretch his legs in the small space and his inability to escape the salt spray. His only sense of relief was that Diana was clearly feeling it too. She shifted herself in much the same way, though less obviously, and spent a lot of time fiddling with the rigging or their supplies when she clearly didn't need to.</p><p class="p1">Eventually, she began to entertain herself by leaning dangerously over the side of the boat and staring down into the depths of the ocean. Steve watched her in turn, not sure if he was hoping she'd fall in and he could make his escape, or worried that she would and he'd be left alone or forced to fish her out. Evidently, she seemed to see something she liked, because after what must have been several hours of this routine, she suddenly stood up with a speed that made Steve jump and started to strip her clothes off. <em>Right in front of him.</em></p><p class="p1">"Nn," Steve choked out, and turned around. There was something much different about seeing unclothed female alphas than there was unclothed male ones. Females of any type, really. It wasn't like the army had-</p><p class="p1">There was a splash out of his range of vision. Steve slowly turned his head to see a boat empty save for him and Diana's discarded clothes and weapons.</p><p class="p1">Oh God. She'd actually fallen in. <em>Oh God, she'd fallen in</em>.</p><p class="p1">Steve sat frozen for a long, long moment, unsure of what to do. Did he... <em>check?</em> Was he suppose to jump in after her? He wasn't a good swimmer at the best of times with his bad leg and worse knee and he didn't think he was eager to test it now, the way he was feeling. And the seconds were ticking on. She'd already been under for too long. Surely, she had been under for too long.</p><p class="p1">And then suddenly there was a sound of water breaking and a head of black, wildly-tangled hair emerged over the side of the boat. “I have your next meal,” Diana announced, looking quite pleased with herself. She had some sort of large, dark fish in one hand and the other was effortlessly holding her to the boat’s side, despite the fact that the boat was still moving forward.</p><p class="p1">"... oh.” Steve said, suddenly very irritated and very tired. "... thank you," he added grudgingly.</p><p class="p1">Diana blinked at him, a drawn-out action that seemed oddly... deliberate, and then with that single hand on the boards, she pulled herself back into the boat with ease. She was, Steve realized, almost <em>completely</em> naked except for what looked like a leather wrap around her hips. There was absolutely nothing covering her chest, which even for a female alpha was strange and Steve, feeling like it would be rude to ignore her after she'd risked getting him food, tried to appear that he was only focused on her face, and not on the clear outlines of her muscles, the blatant nature of her chest, or the large, strangely elaborate scar on her right shoulder.</p><p class="p1">She then didn't even bother to redress before she quickly and rapidly gutted the fish using one of her discarded knives. The motions were so fast and practiced that Steve nearly felt ill watching them - clearly, even for someone who was allegedly royalty, she knew her way around a knife in a way that spoke of practical use. But despite the danger, he found himself strangely mesmerized. Every movement revealed the thick lines of muscles in her arms and calves and drew attention to... everything.</p><p class="p1">Steve sat, legs drawn up to his chest and tried not to look. He knew he shouldn't. It was a bad idea to be looking someone in this state, even if they weren't that different in form. She was a bit like a man and he was a bit like a woman- but still. It was rude. Even if he couldn't be blamed, because she was working <em>naked</em> and there was so much skin and <em>how was it all muscle</em>.</p><p class="p1"><em>So much muscle</em>. And not a single hair anywhere except on her head - even under her arms and on her legs. Did she <em>shave</em> that? Steve had met plenty of omegas who tried to appeal to alphas by making themselves more like women; shaving the hair off their arms, legs and chests, softening their skin with creams or wearing long jackets clinched at the waist like skirts, but it was a game he didn’t play and he hadn’t <em>ever</em> shaved as a result. On a good day, it looked tedious, and that amount of skin <em>had</em> to be more than tedious. There was so much of it. So much skin. Even her <em>thighs</em> had visible muscle - Steve had seen it even before she undressed. That short white dress she had been wearing when she rescued him had stuck to her skin when she had pulled him out of the water, and the leather skirt she had been wearing over it since hadn't even reached beyond mid-thigh.</p><p class="p1">Steve gave up pretending and pressed his face into his knees, trying very hard not to think of very, very tall women with miles of earthy-brown muscles calling themselves amazon warriors. That worked until Diana announced that she was putting it over the still-flickering lantern to cook and that it would be ready when the sun fell.</p><p class="p1">That was far enough way along that Steve was nearly disappointed. He didn't want to beg for food, but as the day dragged on - <em>thankfully</em>, with Diana reclothed - it became clear she didn't believe in the concept of a midday meal and that he'd have to wait.</p><p class="p1">For a lack of anything else to do, Steve eventually tried to get some sleep in the afternoon. It was harder than it had been the night before for some reason. Maybe it was the fact that Diana was just staring at him and he couldn't tell if she was just curious or if she meant something by it. Maybe it was because she hadn't made a damn move yet and he almost just wanted her to get it over with so he would know. But either way, she didn't say or do anything and eventually he did manage to close his eyes and keep them closed.</p><p class="p1">When he dreamed, it was worst than before. Under his eyelids, memories of Maru and the guards and a hundred other alphas and betas that were pale shadows of them played themselves out in a grotesque dance of torment. His skin burned and split apart, bones shattering and breaking through flesh, he spat blood and coughed up poison and then he woke. Again and again and again.</p><p class="p1">He was so tired. That was why he kept up the attempt. That was why he went back to asleep after he woke up from the memory of Maru. Maybe the next attempt wouldn't have her in there. He was just so tired and he was in pain anyway and maybe if Diana came for him while he was asleep, he'd miss most of it. He didn't always wake up. Not every time.</p><p class="p1">He dreamed. His escort was lying dead with Maru’s poison bubbling up from his lips and Maru was stroking a hand along his ribs as she cut bits of his skin off to drop in vials of acids. He woke up. Ignored the look his rescuer was giving him. Tried again, as exhaustion took hold like an alpha’s hand on his ankle and he was pulled back down into sleep.</p><p class="p1">He dreamed. The guards had pulled him into the hallway and the omega prisoner next door to his cell was weeping. He tried to push away the alpha on top of him, but he couldn't move his body. He couldn't move his fingers. He couldn't even control his lungs, he couldn't move his <em>eyes</em>, he was just forced to watch-</p><p class="p1">He woke up. Diana turned her head to look at him, a frown on her face. She must have been angry he was disturbing her. "Are you well?" she asked, but Steve didn't answer. He almost wanted her to hit him for it, just to know that it had happened and he knew what it would feel like with her.</p><p class="p1">He dreamed. He woke up. He dreamed. He woke up. The sun was lower on the horizon, but it still wasn't evening. He tried again and this time, the dream lingered. It was Maru. Then it was Diana. Then it was Maru again. Then it was some officer he didn't even remember the name of and his escort and someone else and-</p><p class="p1">He woke up strangled on his own voice, ribs aching and lungs burning and his voice raw and above him, looming like a shadow over the world, was Diana.</p><p class="p1">“Are you well?” she asked, and on instinct, he reacted - the knife was out of his sleeve and going for her face before he could even register he was all the way awake, that it was-</p><p class="p1">He didn't even see her move. Her hand was wrapped around his wrist, the knife inches from her face. He trembled in her grip, but when he tugged, tried to pull his own arm free, it wouldn't <em>budge</em>. Her hand didn't even <em>move</em>.</p><p class="p1">Diana squeezed his wrist a little, and he whimpered on instinct. She moved her thumb up, slowly and deliberately, without giving any leeway and then she <em>pressed</em> on his palm, harder than he thought one finger could. He got the message as soon as it started to hurt and with a trembling reluctance, opened his hand to dropped the knife.</p><p class="p1">It fell towards his thigh, but her other hand moved just as fast and suddenly she had it.</p><p class="p1">“Amazons are ten times as fast and strong as a man,” she told him, in a low, stern voice that was quite unlike the version of her he had seen so far. “There is naught you can do that I cannot do faster and better. Do you wish to strike at me, man?”</p><p class="p1">“Please,” he gasped, his breathing coming fast and hard as he tried to pull himself free. He couldn't, he couldn't make her arm move, he couldn't even rotate his wrist, he could barely <em>feel</em> his fingers already - she had him and she was nearly on top of him and all he could think of was that lead-heavy weight and strength<em> ten times his own </em>pinning him down as those sharp teeth aimed for him.</p><p class="p1">She frowned at him and slowly let him go. “You are frightened,” she said, and sounded - <em>dismayed? Sad</em>? Like she was upset he was <em>scared</em>?</p><p class="p1">“Please,” Steve repeated, sinking down onto his back and telling himself - it wasn't really presenting. He didn't even know what he was asking for either - mercy? Nobody ever had mercy, not for him. He tried to draw his legs up, press his thighs together but kicked her a bit in the process and recoiled further with a nearly noiseless whimper.</p><p class="p1">Diana didn't seem to notice. She was staring at him with a frown, crouched over him like a looming beast over prey. Eventually, she drew out of her crouch, her form towering over him with impossible height, his knife still in her hand. “I did not mean to frighten you,” she said, in a low, almost mournful voice.</p><p class="p1">Steve had heard that voice before. <em>I didn’t mean to hurt you</em>. <em>I didn’t mean for it to go this far. Why do you act like this?</em> As if it was <em>his</em> fault he wasn't happy about having some alpha’s seed dripping down his legs, as if it was <em>his</em> fault he hadn't taken their makeshift gag easily and someone had to beat his head into the ground-</p><p class="p1">She withdrew, stepping back as her empty hand came up in some universal form of surrender. “My apologies, I only meant to wake you.” She didn't looking at him directly as she said it.</p><p class="p1">Steve watched her go. There wasn't the ability to say anything in his throat anymore and so he wrapped his arms around himself and laid there. He didn't try to sleep again. He was awake now and felt it, hyperaware the way he usually was when an alpha got that close. His body - the bloody <em>traitor</em> - had reacted, sensing what might happen; the extra crevasse between his legs had begun to slick. He felt it wet on his skin, sticking to his oversized clothes. The warning that had been issued the day before had finally come through, it seemed.</p><p class="p1">Stupid, fucking, <em>shite</em> body. If Diana hadn't been there, Steve would have slipped a few fingers inside himself, tried to satisfy the yearning that was growing and growing and <em>growing</em>, but he couldn't. Not with her there.</p><p class="p1">He laid there for a very long time. The sun dropped lower in the sky and he ignored the burning urge for water, even when Diana slid a jar onto the hand-over bench. Eventually, she declared the fish she'd caught done, or perhaps it had gotten late enough and she'd taken pity on him.</p><p class="p1">Steve didn't take it at first. He didn't want to. He didn't want anything she could offer him and he didn't want to be stuck here, on this little boat with his endless nightmares and no escape and an alpha, who had nearly crawled on top of him while he had slept and taken his only weapon when he had used it against her.</p><p class="p1">She hadn't beaten him for it yet. Or taken anything else, in exchange. She would at some point, Steve was sure of it. It just hadn't happened yet. He knew he would have to make a choice when it did happen - decide how far he was going to bend, when she took. But his options were limited. He knew that. He didn't like it, but he knew it. There would only be so much he would be able to do.</p><p class="p1">"You should eat now," she reminded him. And when it got no response, "it is time for you to eat." And then, "it is cooked, I knew that much."</p><p class="p1">Eventually, after a long moment of silence, she began to move towards him and Steve couldn't take it. Not the thought of what punishment she might decide to inflict on him. He reached for the cloth and its cooling piece of fish and pulled it towards him, halting her advance.</p><p class="p1">It didn't taste of much of anything. She hadn't bothered to salt or season it, but it was a larger portion than he'd had to start the day and despite the sick feeling spilling throughout him, he managed to choke it down. He took the water after that, and only then did Diana seem pleased with what he had done.</p><p class="p1">It was odd behaviour, he thought. Or the part of him that wasn't focused on the hollow hole in his centre thought. He wasn't sure he had ever had an alpha bully him into eating before. Force him to eat a courting or nesting gift - sure. Eat a regular meal? No, alphas were more likely to make sniggering remarks about how they could offer him <em>something else</em> if he wasn't hungry. This wasn't normal at all.</p><p class="p1">Not that she was normal.</p><p class="p1">"Are you well?" she asked, looking at him with an expression he couldn't really name.</p><p class="p1">Steve didn't answer that.</p><p class="p1">"You do not look well," she said in a lower voice, almost to herself. "Have I hurt you?"</p><p class="p1">What sort of alpha asked that? Steve couldn't even recall the last one to have bothered with the illusion of niceties. It must have been before the war - everyone had gotten crueler, after the war had started. All his wounds had gotten worse. He didn't understand why she was acting this way, why she was- why-</p><p class="p1">When he looked up, some impossible time of length later, she was sitting closer to him, one board over from the hand-over bench, her back pressed against the mast. Even though she was clearly trying to be causal, the whole world seemed to narrow down to her massive, powerful presence, the intensity she seemed to just radiate. She was close enough that Steve could even pick up her scent - the half alpha, half something else combination that seemed to spark some hidden part of his mind into... something. Something that wasn't the usual omega reaction.</p><p class="p1">There was no extra space, not with her that close. No way for him to distance himself further unless he wanted to go over the edge of the boat. He didn't even have anywhere he could look except directly at her towering, looming presence. Nothing to do but huddle in the shadow of her as he waited for her to do something.</p><p class="p1">He had known her - what, two or three days? That was a long time for an alpha to resist such an obviously usable omega, in his experience. Maybe this was it. Maybe she was going to make her move now.</p><p class="p1">"You are not well, man," she told him, finally noticing his attention on her. "Do you need healing?"</p><p class="p1">"My <em>name</em>," said Steve in a low, low voice that didn't feel like his own and didn't seem to come from him, "is <em>Steven Trevor</em>, not <em>man</em>."</p><p class="p1">She blinked, a subdued expression for such an outburst from such an obviously disrespectful omega. "I was told that was likely the name of your master," she replied, and the words were shocking enough that Steve didn't even really catch her tone.</p><p class="p1">“My- <em>what</em>?” he choked, something ugly and uncomfortably curling in his gut. Did she- what had he…?</p><p class="p1">He hadn't even really registered moving, but he had, he realized a moment later. Curled away from her instinctively, because there was mistakes and there was <em>assumptions</em> and there was the fact that no one had made it off that island and he hadn't seen a single man and she had <em>thought</em>-</p><p class="p1">“Steven is a name, not a word,” Diana explained slowly, staring intently at him as she spoke. “It is written on your band and An- General Antiope said it was most likely the name of the one that owns you.”</p><p class="p1">“Nobody <em>owns me</em>,” Steve whispered, the words half sticking in his mouth and sitting sour in his gut. It was a lie. It was always a lie, when someone called him an army whore or an officer's bedwarmer. That wasn't what he was, he had been <em>enlisted</em>, he was due the same respect as all the other soldiers, even if he was- even if-</p><p class="p1">Without thinking, he had raised a hand to his collar. It was uncomfortably warm against his skin, heated by the same sun that had beaten down on him all day. It was the same collar every army omega wore. It wasn't that different from the collars <em>all</em> omegas wore. His might have been welded shut, his might have been tighter than most, but he'd been a flight risk since day one and he'd been so young- so damn young, when his father had said <em>it's time you were of use</em> and lied on the enlistment forms his old army friend had slid smirkingly in Steve's direction. Steven Trevor. Seventeen when he was really fifteen. Heated when he wasn't. Fixed, which was the truth, though the scars had still be new then. The collar was the law, at least in British territory. They hadn't known he'd still had so much to grow, when they'd put it on him. And if he hadn't run, they wouldn't have sealed it shut. He really only had himself to blame.</p><p class="p1">He could feel the faint indents of the words and numbers on it. The army's symbol. His name, his serial number. The birthdate that wasn't really real and and the heatdate that was. The rough addition where the commanding office of his training camp had stamped <em>Property of the British Army</em> on it just to make sure everyone knew.</p><p class="p1">"But you belong to someone," Diana said. Her words felt a little far away - Steve wasn't sure if she had said anything else that he hadn't caught. "That is the point of it, is it not?"</p><p class="p1">"I belong to the army," said Steve. That, at least, was true of all soldiers. "And it's- how do you not <em>know this?</em>"</p><p class="p1">He flinched after realizing what he had said. Diana was probably going to hit him for that one. Alphas hated him pointing things out.</p><p class="p1">But Diana didn't. She was frowning at him. Or - he thought she was. It didn't seem like she was upset, though he didn't understand how she could be frowning and not mad at him.</p><p class="p1">"This is a mark?" She asked after a moment, "of rank?"</p><p class="p1">"... no," said Steve, though that was true enough in its own way. He hadn't met an omega above the rank of Private in all his years serving. "It's- its for- it's for omegas. Omegas wear collars. Everybody- everybody knows that. They do it everywhere. It's- it's how you tell."</p><p class="p1">Diana just looked more confused. She kept looking at him and he couldn't even tell what she was <em>asking</em> behind that look. But eventually she drew back, seemingly deciding to abandon it. “... you are not a slave,” she said after a moment, as if testing if the words were true, "though you bear a slave’s collar and have a slave’s marks and you flinch like a slave would - but this means something different to you?"</p><p class="p1">There was a lump in his throat. It wasn’t that he'd ever thought about it that way, because he <em>had</em>. He would be hard-pressed to find an army omega who hadn’t. It was just that everybody knew that wasn’t <em>really</em> what was going on - he was getting paid, even if the money went to his father and Steve never saw any of it. He could leave if his father signed off on it. He could get married if he found an alpha woman to take him; he could own property if his husband died or his father suddenly decided to give him an inheritance. That wasn’t <em>slavery</em>, even if he could never go out in public without a collar or an escort, even if nobody would ever hire him, rent to him, <em>sell</em> to him, not without having a beta or alpha breathing down his <em>neck </em>like he wasn't any better than a <em>pup</em>.</p><p class="p1">“It’s not like that,” Steve whispered and knew his voice was quiet and ragged sounding in the fading light. It wasn't a lie - but it tasted like one in his mouth. And he was shaking, though he didn't remember starting.</p><p class="p1">“Do those marks mean something else than?” she asked, and when Steve risked a glance up, she had laid a finger against her own bare cheek, obviously pointing at the scars on Steve’s own face.</p><p class="p1">He didn’t bother mirroring her gesture. He <em>knew</em> what she was pointing at. The dozens or the hundred-odd horizontal scars, cut short and long into his face by the nails and knives of a hundred alphas. He knew most of them were faint, some even too faint to be seen in the low light like this - but some were deep or raised, reaching from ear to nose, eye to hairline or lip to cheek-edge. Some stood out, so predominately he knew them by feel, could recall the alphas that had put them there in an instant from the touch alone.</p><p class="p1">He had never met anyone who didn’t know what they meant.</p><p class="p1">“I have sisters with marks like that,” Diana continued, when he didn't answer. “They were put there by men who had claimed them, meant as punishment or for the enjoyment of it. Is that what it means?"</p><p class="p1">Something slid down in Steve’s stomach. Like a cup falling off the shelf. Suddenly, her exile to the far side of the boat had another light behind it, however dim. The hostility of the others back on the island perhaps thrown into a starker relief as well.</p><p class="p1">"... they're omega marks." Steve said, after a very long moment. "It's- omegas get them when they cause... trouble. When they need to be..." The words were sticking in his throat. The urge not to tell her was overwhelming - all-consuming, really, but it wasn't anything anyone else didn’t already know. And if he kept her talking, just maybe- "... when they need to be punished. People- people cut a mark to punish the omega and to let others know they need to watch out for further…. deviance.”</p><p class="p1">That wasn’t all it told people, but Steve couldn't bring himself to mention that. <em>Officially</em>, on the <em>books</em>, that was what it meant. It was just, that after so many years and so many scars, Steve knew the real reason most put a mark there.</p><p class="p1"><em>This one’s trouble</em>, it said. <em>Nobody’s going to care if you rough him up a little.</em></p><p class="p1">"... and you are one of these... omegas," Diana said slowly. "It is not a rank?"</p><p class="p1">That- okay. That one, Steve had run into before, traveling as he had. Not everybody used the same words as Briton did, though he hated explaining, or being the thing <em>explained</em>, as had been the case before. "An omega's... a man or woman like me," Steve tried, hoping she'd only need the nudge to get it, "we have... heats, and wear collars and we're-" <em>God</em>, how he didn't want to say this all, and Diana was still staring at him with an intense look that said <em>clearly she hadn't gotten it yet</em>. "- we can have pups," Steve settled on. "We-"</p><p class="p1">"You are a carrying man," Diana interrupted, a spark of recognition in her eyes, "you can bear children."</p><p class="p1">"... Yes," Steve said, deciding to skirt around the fact that he, personally, could not. "That's... that's what I am."</p><p class="p1">Diana made a humming noise - perhaps one of understanding. "I have never seen one," she elaborated, "most of the men that have come to our shores in my lifetime have been siring men or those that are neither. But I know they were once common among the army, before we came to the temple."</p><p class="p1">They probably had been. It was a tale as old as time, as they say, and Steve didn't bother responding to that. At least he understood her confusion a bit better. Maybe there hadn't been an omega in a line for a long time - it happened sometimes. Alphas that married betas or betas that married each other, keeping omegas out of it even if it meant less pups, lower birth rates. It lowered the chances, at the very least, even if you didn't stick to families that never seemed to produce one type or another all the time.</p><p class="p1">“… I do not believe it has worked very well if you have gathered that many,” Diana added after a moment. Her voice was low - soft. Almost kind.</p><p class="p1">"...Worked?" Steve dared to ask. He felt so tired. It had been such a long day.</p><p class="p1">"The scars," Diana elaborated, "they have not worked, have them? To teach you."</p><p class="p1">Steve looked at her. She was staring back and he realized - she genuinely didn't know. Maybe he shouldn't have told her at all. Maybe she wouldn't have even understood what he was, if he hadn't. Maybe it wasn't too late to lie.</p><p class="p1">"No," he said instead, "it never did."</p><p class="p1">When he risked another look at her, she was smiling a bit. She was still closer than he would have liked, but she had not reached for him and he wasn't sure if she was going to, now. It seemed like she had just wanted to know, in the end.</p><p class="p1">“I will call you Steven, then,” she said, “instead of man. Unless the other name is the one you prefer?”</p><p class="p1">Some part of him didn't want her to call him anything. To acknowledge that they seemed to be gaining a <em>truce</em>. That this might be something that was going to last beyond this day, this boat ride, this week. But despite all that he hated being viewed as less than a man, the way <em>she</em> said it felt so strange and he was forced to admit he didn't want her to continue with it at all. Anything would be better than being reduced back down to the basic parts of his self, regardless of the which parts she was emphasizing.</p><p class="p1">"Steven's fine," he whispered. He could put up with it, until they parted ways. It would do for now. He could handle it.</p><p class="p1">"Than Steven it is," Diana said, and she smiled at him. Like they were friends.</p><p class="p1">He could probably handle it.</p><hr/><p class="p1">The water was clear and so was the sky. The stars did not hide behind their distant shrouds and the waves did not sing of concealed teeth and fins, looking to snap and <em>eat</em>, and <em>yet</em>-</p><p class="p1">There was danger here. She could smell it in the air, bringing the not-so distant scent of land - <em>real</em> land, with rivers and lakes and mountains reaching for Gods they could not see. She could see it in the water, beginning to move as it did when the sand beneath began to claw its way up towards a shore. She could hear it in the wind, howling outraged at the barriers to its forceful push that were growing nearer with every breath she took.</p><p class="p1">She could feel it too, just barely. She was no great reader of flame or bones, she had never been one to read dreams or traces like a healer read a wound, but she had learned enough to teach others - as she <em>should</em> - and she knew how to breath in and feel what the echoing shivering twangs of fate's threads were trying to tell her.</p><p class="p1"><em>There is danger here</em>. The enemy across from her knew it too. He slumbered across from her in fits and bursts that tugged at the deep, instinctive parts of herself, reminding her of things she had never seen or done but others before her <em>had</em>. She knew this as the movements of a warrior bracing for a threat that had been wounded but not defeated - it was coming for her <em>children</em> (she had none) - it was coming for her <em>unit</em> (she was alone) - it was coming to <em>kill her</em> (she was stronger than that) - it was the touch of man, not painful but <em>violating </em>(she had never-), coming not to wound but to <em>take and leave behind</em> (she-)</p><p class="p1">The enemy shuddered awake in the dark once again. The stars were not shrouded and the water was calm and the flame in front of her did not spark with <em>battle coming</em> but he gasped as if something had been breathes away from sinking in a blade and looked around as if he could see what it was, if only he looked hard enough.</p><p class="p1">He caught sight of her much slower than she expected, even knowing how weak his eyes must have been. Perhaps, she thought, it was more that he saw the flicker of the lantern, and then her form beyond it and <em>truly</em>, she knew - from lessons <em>and</em> the deep part of herself - that his eyes could not see in shadows as hers could, but she was not even <em>hiding</em>. Nor had she <em>moved</em>.</p><p class="p1">He stared at her for a long moment - more than enough time to strike - and then laid his head down even though he still smelled of the distinct fear smell she knew as <em>dangerous-thing-looking-at-me</em>. Lessons had compounded on what the deep parts told her; you did not rest while danger was near and yet she heard it as his breathing eased from rapid-quick to slightly-less-so and saw it as his body loosened into sleep, ever so little that it seemed to loosen at all.</p><p class="p1"><em>Dangerous-thing-looking-at-me</em> faded off the wind and destiny twanged again, a soft vibration like a loom-hung thread caught beneath a nail or claw. She had been listening, since that day when she could have sworn the sun and the moon and the stars and the sky and the <em>land</em> and the <em>air</em> and the <em>water</em> had been screaming at her, yelling her name and calling out to her and she had fled from the temple, just to get some peace. Given the excuse to visit Hilarius, when the others had insisted they heard nothing, even the seer Augusta, who had seen into the flames for her and only said <em>the weave is thick here </em>as she had been doing much of late.</p><p class="p1">Away from the temple, full of Gods' statues and praying words, the air had been quieter, if not <em>silent</em> and a visit to Hilarius had been long overdue anyway, out on the far side of the temple's island where the box that had come from the stars had been placed to be guarded. Hilarius had not been having a speaking day, but the company had been nice and the moon-lit walk along the shoreline had been nicer - or it <em>had been</em>, until that great roaring had come and metal had fallen from where no metal should fall.</p><p class="p1">She had barely been able to hear her own thoughts over the screaming destiny had been doing <em>then</em> but she had managed a rescue all the same. And for every second <em>since</em>, she had been listening to fate hiss and snarl and <em>push</em> at her, things that were almost words, would have been words, except everyone knew that destiny did not speak like that and certainly not to her or her sisters if it did; her sisters who had only seers and no oracles, no sibyls or great prophets. The Gods did not speak of such things to them, because all sisters <em>knew</em> their fates; it was to birth and live and fight and die for the Gods and all those who they favoured and what would such a little thing as this enemy have anything to do with <em>that</em>-</p><p class="p1">She breathed in - destiny, fate, the future; woven so tight she nearly <em>choked</em> on it - and breathed out, a warrior's peace. She had armour, sharp edges and provisions. She had strength, speed and reserves. She was alone, but she was a Princess, a Queen's heir if she could pull this off. She was ready, for blood and battles and <em>glory</em>, and it did not matter, that this enemy was small and frail and <em>so little</em>, compared to the stories her sisters told. He had not even weighed as much as one of their kept boars, when she had lifted him up, and it did not matter that her senses filled with the smell of wounds and deep hurts when she tried to read him. It did not matter, for he was the enemy and she must be on guard, against him and for the thing that he feared, <em>his</em> enemy, that he woke again and again to try and find in the dark.</p><p class="p1">The sea and the sky and her senses were clear but he still smelled of <em>dangerous-thing-looking-at-me</em>. And if- if perhaps- if so very quietly, in the back of her mind, she wondered if (<em>knew</em>) he was looking at <em>her</em>, that the dangerous thing looking at him was <em>her</em>- well, she had had that talk, many times. <em>Sometimes</em>, Antiope had said, as soon as she was old enough to speak words in an order that could be understood and could therefore ask, <em>the mind forgets. Especially if one is old and something is new. They do not fear you, Diana-</em></p><p class="p1">(Only they did and she knew it and so did Antiope, who had always been quick to pull aside guards and warriors alike, to growl from quiet corners they thought she could not hear into, that <em>if they could not stop gossiping like gulls above a catch, they would be gutting fish with the birds for company until the next harvest</em>.)</p><p class="p1">The enemy shuddered awake. A hand went to his throat, wrapped in leather and metal. He made a noise - soft and pained, though she smelt no new blood. His body moved in a way that the deep parts told her was <em>normal</em>, for his kind, but that experience said were far from the movements of any sister and so not normal at all. His scent picked up, spiking from vague fear to something specific - <em>I-have-been-hurt!</em> it screamed, only there was no <em>wound</em>, she had been <em>watching</em>, she would have <em>seen something</em> if there was <em>something to see!</em></p><p class="p1">He fell back into sleep without finding her in the dark at all and she searched the sky and the waves as he did. There were no beasts or enemies in either. She breathed in until the weave of fate and destiny felt like it had tangled around her insides but it said <em>nothing</em>, for it was not supposed to have words and if it whispered- (-<em>iana-Diana-DIANA-Diana-Dia</em>-) then she was just imagining things and her captured enemy must be confused. Perhaps his mind was lost, as some sisters got. Wandering in one's sleep was not uncommon; she had started her training in the healing arts helping Ptolema soothe dreams full of old things that could not hurt anymore but felt like they <em>did</em>.</p><p class="p1">Perhaps it was this, she reasoned. Ptolema was old and very skilled, and had plenty of wisdom to dispense, if you cut out the parts where she yelled at you for having the brains of the wrong half of a field-mouse for <em>using a blade like that.</em> Ptolema had been sold in the cities of Men long before she could be taught under a real healing-sister and had learned first from her enemies, before she'd gotten too big and too strong to be kept anymore and had been sold back. Most - the Queen included - dismissed her mutterings on how Man and sister were alike with ease, but perhaps... perhaps there was something there, in doses cut and methods modified for their weaker bodies. Perhaps this one could be treated, if there was not really an enemy here anymore.</p><p class="p1">(If it wasn't her, in the end. That was no flaw, after all. He was the enemy and <em>should</em> fear her, she who was <em>built</em> to be feared, never mind what her own sisters felt when they looked at her-)</p><p class="p1">It was a possibility. She meditated on it, allowing her mind to slip into a gentle state and her body to rest loose and easy, only her senses really watching as the sky remained clear and the sea more so. Stars swam above her (whispering <em>diana-diana-diana</em>) and were mirrored below, in glassy waters (-<em>Diana-Diana-Diana</em>-) and she watched, as her enemy, prisoner and charge all in one awoke again, so still this time she almost didn't catch it, and fell asleep once again to the sounds of- (<em>-DIANA-DIANA-DIANA-)</em> nothing.</p><p class="p1">Fate spooled and twisted and wrapped itself around her. A weave she could not see and could not hear or feel or <em>touch</em>, for she was an Amazon of the Army, a true (<em>please, let it be true</em>) sister of their great ranks and there was nothing (<em>please</em>, <em>let it be</em> <em>nothing</em>-) different about her. Fate was not for Amazons, who might win glory but never destiny. Surely, the world cried for this Man, who must have something great he was meant to do. Surely, if she would only deliver him to that fate-</p><p class="p1">Surely, she reasoned. Surely she could prove she was a real Amazon. She was Diana of Themyscira, Princess and choosen-daughter-sister to the great Queen Hippolyta. She had been raised by Generals and her mother-sister's Council. She had passed all her tests with honours and had grown on legends as old as the Army. It did not matter that she had been made unlike the others. It did not matter what her sisters said, where and when they thought she could not hear.</p><p class="p1">Her enemy stirred again. This time it was slow and stiff, the awakening of the deeply exhausted. He curled tighter for a long moment and then uncoiled, like an eel wanting to strike, as he blinked weak eyes up at a sky that had just begun to lighten. Behind him, just at the edge of her vision, the waves dropped down into the sea and the first edges of land rose above them.</p><p class="p1">Diana allowed it to flow around her. She was a Princess, a warrior. She had armour, sharp edges and provisions. She had strength, speed and reserves. She had an enemy too weak to be a threat and a land full of glory ahead of her. It did not matter that he had spoken of <em>a war to end all wars</em> nor that fate was howling for her attention on the dawning breeze. She would prove herself here, in this land of Men, and finally earn the respect of her sisters as she should have long ago.</p><p class="p1">And if, in that early dawn light, underneath the call of a destiny she should never have been able to hear, there was an echo of dear General Antiope's voice - well, it did not matter. Even if the only words it said were the ones that were most important above all others, coming from the deep parts of herself as much as it came from any lesson.</p><p class="p1">A warning to end all warnings, whispered on the breeze of fate.</p><p class="p1">
  <em>A lone Amazon is a dead Amazon.</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p><strong>Movie!Diana:</strong> once you leave Themycira, you can never find your way back :( I am stranded forever for following <strike>that dick</strike> my conscious.<br/><strong>My Diana:</strong> of course I can find my way back, it's laughably easy. The only problem would be if I- [FOGHORN NOISE COVERS SPOILERS]</p><p>or alternately;</p><p>The idea that Amazons are biologically a nightmare and/or mystery <em>could</em> be considered a commentary on the trope that women a) don't experience bodily functions and b) aren't understandable by men, but I would like to propose an alternate theory; that the concept of "intelligent beings are proof of intelligent design" is full of plotholes and any creature designed by people just wouldn't function, unless those people were all-powerful divine entities who could just wave their hands to make shit work if they didn't want to do the math. And so in this essay I will-</p><p>(the length of this essay is the reason my teachers gave me page limits in high school)</p><p>Why do Ancient Greek Amazons not regonize the use of Ancient Greek terminology in regards to presentations? Probably because humanity never tells them anything and also because it has nothing to do with fighting, so they never paid any attention in the first place. (And because I feel like alpha/omega would be relatively 'modern' English terms for something no culture would ever historically agree on.) That's all I'm saying on that subject, because there's plenty of in-story discussion that'll come up over time. No spoilers for any of <em>you</em>.</p><p>It was real squint-and-you'll-miss-it, but this is a "omegas have vaginas" ABO-au. Steve's got issues about this.</p><p>I like to think that Steve's mindset during this whole trip can be summed up as an angry "oh no, she's <em>hot",</em> while Diana's is a horrified and impressed "oh no, he's a <em>rebel".</em> Meanwhile, Diana's mum and Steve's dad are having fits of outrage and disgust with no discernible cause. All around, nobody's having a good day. <em>Yet.</em></p><p>Diana didn't originally have a POV until next chapter, but I decided to add one to the end of this one instead, so I could slowly introduce her while also keeping some of the mystery Steve's trying to unravel. It was originally just going to be a short thing (A REAL SHORT THING), but then she opened her mouth and it turned out she had a lot to say on a lot of subjects, which is how all my chapters got this long. Diana's POVs might be a bit spotty over the next little while, but will eventually even out to be about 50/50 with Steve, if anyone's worried about... pagetime? What's the written version of screentime? I don't know. Anyway, more shall be revealed eventually! Eventually.</p><p>On that note, I HAVE made some good progress recently so you <em>MIGHT</em> get a surprise chapter sooner rather than later. We'll see how it goes. Thank you everyone for your comments, kudos and subscriptions, I adore every one. :)</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This story will update on the first of every month, or close to. Updates may increase in frequency if I get ahead of my backlog. This is my shame fic so I have no social media for you to follow me on. I <em>might</em> put together a discord server or something, however, if it turns out people want to talk to me. Thanks for reading, folks. &lt;3 It might take a while for me to get all this story out, but it's living too deep in my head for anything else.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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